Sunday’s summer solstice marked the exact middle of the summer season, which both starts and ends sooner than one might expect when yoked to the arbitrary calendar of, say, middle school rather than the celestial mechanics of our planet. Note to Alice Cooper: Technically speaking, “School’s out for midsummer!”

Much of Scandinavia recognizes this moment with midsomer-themed festivals, which not only celebrate the longest day of the year but do so with “färskpotatis”—little boiled potatoes to apparently pair with pickled herring. We should start celebrating midsomer here. It would at least make accurate our teens’ assessment that everything is “mid.” 

They’re too young to know what’s really mid—like middle age. Which is all “mid” until you “dle.” Is your färskpotatis acting up? Of course it is. Especially when you learned that it’s 85 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. What’s this you ask? It’s how the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists gauge the imminent threat of nuclear devastation. This is the closest the clock has ever been to “midnight” in its history. What happens at midnight? We hit the Big Snooze Button and dream.

Speaking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the midsomer I turned 12, I was in a school production of Shakespeare’s forest frolic, in which I played Nick Bottom, one of the so-called “rude mechanicals” who is temporarily transformed into a jackass with whom the fairy queen falls in love. This, naturally, set the course for the rest of my life and somehow led me here, where I realize that this column marks the 26th of 52 planned editions this year—the exact midpoint of our publishing season. Not the beginning and not the end, but the perfect place to pause and reflect on the strange dreams that brought us here.

This is the part where I should quote the Bard (“I have had a most rare vision…”), but my inner jackass insists you get Scottish folk-rock band Stealers Wheel instead:

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”