FOR REAL: I will never go to your cottage, ever

"FOR REAL" is a weekly place for Anne T. Donahue to gracefully rage out about politics, pop culture and the general insanity of being alive in 2017.

The summer is useless. It tries too hard, it's desperate, and it brings nothing but the reminder that none of us appreciates jacket weather while we have it. Summer is the worst and so is most of what it's associated with.

And that's why I will never go to your cottage. Because that's where summer exists the most.

• PREVIOUSLY: Every Canadian stereotype is terrible. Sorry, but I'm right and you know I'm right
• PREVIOUSLY: Make Celine Dion and Drake co-prime ministers of Canada

I'm sure your cottage is nice. I'm sure it's cozy and big enough or has enough beds for every person and boasts a working toilet. I'm sure the kitchen is big enough for everybody to make dinner as a type of collective and that the dock is within walking distance and the lake is clean and that the nearest town is only 250 km away. I think it's great that your cottage has cable and that it's just like a regular house.

Once, I liked a guy who, after being convinced to please stop playing the acoustic guitar, turned his guitar over and played it like a drum.

Except it isn't a regular house. It's a cottage. And with cottages come the expectation that I must engage with summer in a way reserved for people who like to sit in parks. (As an aside: I hate sitting in parks.)

Cottages are like summer in that they too are never chill. Cottages come with expectations. You have to want to swim. (I don't own a bathing suit for this reason: I hate water and I don't trust it, so absolutely not.) You have to want to tan. (I once got a sunburn sitting in my car.) You have to be okay with bugs. (I'm not. No one is.) And you have to be fine with social engagement for up to and including 72 hours.

I can do six hours. Ten, max. After that, I want to go to the mall by myself and remember who I am and where I came from.

And I'm not alone. No one wants to spend a full weekend with a group of the same people navigating the politics of who brought what and who's cooking when and where are the veggie burgers and who left the hot dogs out. No one wants to share a bathroom with so many people it feels like the most complicated dance scene from Newsies. No one wants to try and sleep while 142 other people play endless rounds of Yahtzee. No one wants to sleep on the floor (because somebody always ends up sleeping on the floor). No one wants to wake up and be actively polite – only this time, without the novelty of having just arrived at the cottage, now instead having to deal with the stark realization that you're stuck. That you're about to face another full day and night of so-and-so's weird cottage rules and what's-his-name's insistence we listen to Bon Iver while sitting around the fire to "create a vibe."

Because it's either that or dude's rendition of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Summertime and cottages are where acoustic guitars gather and mate for life.

Which brings me to my next point: Why? Urban legend dictates that at one cottage moons ago, one man picked up an instrument and ruined a conversation by asking everybody to just "listen to this part for a second" before strumming the same three chords from what may have been a Beatles song for 45 minutes. Once, I liked a guy who, after being convinced to please stop playing, turned his guitar over and played it like a drum. It ended the bonfire, and we scattered like ghosts in the night. I never saw him again because I deliberately chose not to.

None of this would have happened in the winter.

Why? The winter is cruel, and it is honest. It is the friend who'll tell you to your face that it's time to fix your hair and fix your life. It is the friend who says, "I hate that" instead of politely putting up with yet another round of Cards Against Humanity. Winter doesn't suffer fools. Summer delivers them dockside on an inflatable swan. A cottage in the winter is a test of endurance – of strength. (Mainly because you are confined to a single space, lest you freeze to death.) A cottage in the summer is like recess. And even back when I had recess, I knew I'd rather be wearing a coat with the air conditioning cranked.

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