I hate summer. There. I said it.

I know what I’m about to say isn’t going to be very popular. But hey, you know what? Abraham Lincoln wasn’t universally appreciated for his views in his lifetime either.

(Although anyone wishing to assassinate me needs to get in line behind my ex-boyfriends, my ninth-grade English teacher, Kim Kardashian, those Jehovah Witnesses that came to my door last week, Khloe Kardashian, Octomom, my former basketball coach, pretty much the rest of the Kardashians and the entire country of Amsterdam).

OK. Here goes…

I am not a fan of summer.

Oh, screw it. Enough sugarcoating. I downright dislike summer. At certain points, I even loathe it. And as for August? Well, I want to sew one of its orifices to another month’s orifice (preferably July’s) and make them crawl around and do stuff and junk and other mean, evil things. (Confession: I never actually saw “The Human Centipede”).

In fact, I even made a chart about how much I hate summer:

And yes, I am well aware that this makes me the cheese who stood alone and that I might be the only person ever to list summer as my least favorite season. But contrary to the disproportionally angry responses I received on Facebook when I dared to insult this oh-so-holy season, it is not illegal to hate summer.

And yet, when you dare to say this out loud, people act like you just punched a baby in the face. And not one of those ugly babies that no one cares about. One of the super cute ones.

It’s like being a vegetarian in the South. Or a Republican in Portland. Or a woman in Utah. You constantly have to defend your reasoning for daring to be this way.

But to that I say, why does everyone love summer anyway? The major holidays– Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day– are only fun if you have a boat or are good friends* with someone who owns a boat. The rest of us landlubbers just get to look forward to sweating onto our plate of charred meat, sweating out all the beer we worked so hard to chug and trying to prevent our pets from committing suicide in response to the ceaseless BOOM-BOOMs going on all around them.

*Or have really big boobs. Or even semi-big boobs. Or…you know, boobs.

And sure, summer is great when you’re young and when apparently based only on the merit of your immaturity and acne, you earn the right to have those three months off. But once that stops, what’s left? The same stresses you have to deal with in your daily life during all the other seasons, only now with more BO that you pretend not to smell on other people or yourself.

Not to mention the mosquitos. The tiny, tiny unforgiving summer wardrobe. The trying to maintain the delicate balance between not getting skin cancer and not having the skin tone of a corpse. The constant need to shave my man-hairy legs. And seeing people wearing Crocs unironically.

I mean, just look what you have to look forward to during every other season compared to summer:

Now, I thought maybe when I moved to Boston, my summer issues were over. Because after living in South Texas, the land of eternal summer, for five years, it seemed like a breezy, 75 degree, sunny oasis in my heat stroke-destroyed mind.

But HA! No! It’s hot and humid here too! In fact, I haven’t stopped sweating since May!

And so, I maintain my stance. I hate summer.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scythe off my leg hair and put on 12 more pounds of deodorant.*

*Sorry, fellas, but I’m already taken.