I heard the phrase we all dread — on July 5th

It happened to me the day after the Fourth of July. It probably happened to you around the same time.

You are enjoying a nice summer holiday weekend. Maybe you had a vacation that week, or the week after. Maybe you were headed to the pool, out on the patio, down the boardwalk, at the lake, hours away on some family trip. You are feeling all those summer vibes, gleefully enjoying the summer of '26. Maybe you had even made it this far without that dreadful thing happening. The radio is on, the sun is out, maybe you're watching a favorite show.

And then it snuck up on you and assaulted your entire sense of well-being. You heard the most hated phrase in any language.

Back to school.

SEE ALSO: A Jersey midsummer reality check

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

It keeps arriving earlier every single year

For me, it landed on Fourth of July weekend this year. I am in my 60s. My kids are in their 30s. It has been a long, long time since our family personally had to deal with back-to-school anything. And yet, when I hear that phrase now, I still get that unmistakable feeling of the bottom dropping out of my stomach.

Trying to avoid "back to school" this time of year is basically the same battle as trying to avoid Wham's "Last Christmas" in late November and December. I believe the internet has a name for that particular struggle. They call it Whamageddon. One slip, one accidental listen, and you are out for the year. Back-to-school messaging works the exact same way. You cannot escape it. It finds you in the checkout line, in a commercial break, in a store display that appears while you are still wearing flip-flops.

You've probably already lost this round too

I hope this article is not the first time you have heard the phrase this season. If it is, I genuinely apologize for being the one to break it to you. But I am fairly confident you already heard it somewhere, sometime in the last two and a half weeks. You would think that by my age, decades removed from actual school shopping, I would not care anymore.

I still care. It is a reminder, whether we want it or not, that we are barreling toward the last month of summer sooner than any of us are ready for.

So here is my actual advice, for whatever it's worth. Keep moving forward with your summer before you go back to anything. Squeeze out every remaining pool day, every boardwalk night, every excuse to stay outside a little longer. And to the retailers running these commercials in early July: give us a break. Nobody needs to see a backpack ad before the fireworks smoke has even cleared. Wait until the middle of August, at least. Let us have our summer first.