Stephanie Georgopulos

The intermingling of the family (Real People) and the other guests (You, or someone like You) requires, on your part, behavioral adjustments as to appease and/ or not mortify your host, the graduate.

Spoiler Alert: There be no Carly Rae Jepsen on this playlist (though if you really want to hear “Call Me Maybe,” you probably won’t have trouble making that happen?) Instead, a playlist that celebrates all iterations of summertime.

Take long rides in too-hot cars with the windows down and the radio loud, play music you swore you outgrew like Sublime, or No Doubt, or Grateful Dead, or 311, or Bob Marley, or Long Beach Dub All-Stars, or Tom Petty.

Take time to revisit the places that made you who you are: the apartment you grew up in, your middle school, your hometown. These places may or may not be here forever; you definitely won’t be.

God, it killed me to see my classmates come to school with orange rubberbands on Halloween, and like, rainbow ones just because, and black ones because they were really feeling the new KoRn album.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we’ve put ourselves out there on OkCupid and in bars; that 50 First Dates isn’t just the title of some godawful romcom (JK love it), but something we’ve actually attempted in the pursuit of happiness.

Craig Sellars is a freelance Visual Development artist with an extensive background in the animated feature film, television, and video game industries (he’s worked with Disney and Lego in the past), but many of his digital works are grounded in bleak reality.

Growing up, Mrs. Doubtfire was a mom-approved film in my home, which made the content lily white and pretty unquestionable in my eyes.

So then I was like, I can’t be the only person whose last seven dates have ended in miscalculated terrorist fist bumps (act of endearment for the President and First Lady, horrifying for everyone else).

But man, our bodies are so much more than surface area and image. There’s a lot more of us to accept and love than what’s happening on the outside.

We tell ourselves we’re not special because the news wants to make sure we know that, our predecessors want to make sure we know that, our bosses want to make sure we know that — do we know that? How little we’re entitled to? Just want to make sure we all know that.

You had a happy relationship with Friendster in 2002, but he began losing it when his friends graduated on to bigger and better things — like college, or MySpace.

No more baby-oiled skin. No more sprinklers. No more hopscotch, no jump rope, no dampened, oversized beach towels slung over the backseats of cars. More worry over bodies in swimsuits and what’s see-through and what’s padded and what’s you never conceived of in summers past.

A Tuesday kind of love is this: commuting to work knowing that someone cares about what you’re going to have for lunch; understanding that you do not have to be your dynamic, charming, weekend self this time; this time you can butcher sentences and make bad jokes and trip over thin air and it won’t change anything.

Little did he know, the last thing on earth Claudia was equipped to deal with was the abundance of mismatched neon tube socks, paint-splattered denim overalls, ironic side-boob tanks, authentic eagle feather hair accessories, ikat sweatbands, and sandalwood sandals indicative of Bushwick.

Gelling the baby hairs that frame my face and sculpting them with a toothbrush. Brown lipliner and white eyeliner. Listening to Brandy, writing song-poems. Drafting acceptance speeches for the Grammys I’m going to win. Practicing my autograph. Writing five-page letters to heartthrob celebrities who are twice my age.

I hate Sedaris for exploiting every night the city breathed differently because you and I were moving through it together, why would he tell everyone about that?

The day we shunned the sunlight and stayed in bed drinking beer and watching movies is still one of my favorite days, even if the memory is ancient and the people who experienced it no longer exist.