Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2003 | 1:40 PM

Suburbia came alive in summertime. I remember sprinklers dotting new mown lawns with rainbows caught in water droplets. And daily strolls to the library for Lucy Maude Mongomery and Stephen King. I remember staring down at white sandals against toasted brown feet capped with pale pink toenail polish. I remember craning my neck around every corner in hopes of Spotting Skippy the Ice Cream Man, whose bell often did not work, and whose truck would putter stealthily, voicelessly down the suburban streets, hoping no one would stop him.

I remember afternoons in air-conditioned movie houses with warn out burnt orange carpeting and stale sweet popcorn. Indianna Jones and The Last Crusade. Die Hard. Labrynth. Goonies. Sneaking from one to the other all day long and never getting caught. Phoning our indulgent parents for rides, seven or eight of us piling into one back seat. Or sometimes walking home from Pittsford to Brighton, singing off key all the way, mangling the lyrics to INXS�s Never Tear Us Apart or (more embarrassingly) I Need You Tonight. The pavement so hot you could feel it cooking your feet through the thin rubber soles of your chuck taylor sneaks.

In summer there were barbecues in neighbor�s yards. There were coolers as red and shiny as wax apples overflowing with dewy bottles of Miller High Life and Genny Light. I remember bags and bags of potato chips bought on sale, one never being finished before another was opened. I remember thermoses of bug juice, sickly red and barely sweet.

Later in high school summer meant clandestine parties at the homes of whatever parents happened to be out of town. These parties always sizzled with the possibility of sex. I remember a night of strip poker at Chris Melaney�s when I was 14. I was down to nothing but a threadbare pair of pink bikini briefs, my bra sitting in my lap and my elbows crisscrossed over my exposed breasts. I remember the dichotomy of ecstasy and shame that permeated my being�like oil and water, one sensation sitting distinctly atop another.

I remember later that evening falling asleep on the sofa under an afghan, being awakened by Chris�s large 17 year old bear paw crawling up my thigh as delicately as a baby spider.

Summer also meant lurching off to piss poor jobs at grocery stores bagging boxes of twinkies and breaking the eggs of rich old ladies. It meant time clocks and ludicrous paper hats and nametags with smiley faces on them. It meant fifteen minute breaks smoking out back and stealing stale cherry Danishes from the bakery isle. It meant having a whole twenty dollars each week to spend on whatever you wanted.

Whatever you wanted meaning beer of course. Beer that would be got by bribing vagrants in gas station parking lots. Colt 45 and Olde English to be slurped in the bleachers under the stars with the whole world around you and your whole life ahead of you watching your friends do drunken cartwheels in the new mown grass. your bare feet dangling just above them. Looking down on your own life and not seeing how small, how intimate, how perfect it is. Never wasting a moment pondering the impending Fall