By: Katie Nelson

Center Editor

In the last press cycle, as Center Editor, I was tasked with creating a center page that helped you figure out what 2024 meme you are. During class, my classmates threw out hilarious memes that could say something about you: Maybe you’re always facing bad luck and prefer to express your feelings through Pepé The Prawn King. Perhaps you’re trying to remain nonchalant like The Chill Guy, or can’t get over anything like the nagging Low Taper Fade meme. Regardless, I wrote down everyone’s ideas, somehow writing fellow El Gatan Nelson Kramer’s idea of “brat summer” twice, but once without the “b” in “brat.” Without knowing it, I created Rat Summer, a meme that does not exist anywhere except in my imagination.

Later that night, I submitted my graphics requests with links to all the memes people suggested, including Rat Summer. I was hurrying and chose the first image I could find: a rat in flip-flops and sunglasses at the beach. It seemed close enough to what a rat summer might look like, so I added the link for the graphics team to reference and called it a night. 

By the time press week rolls around, I’m compiling all the blurbs and graphics onto my page. I see a graphic for both Brat Summer, a big green box with the word “brat” spelled inside, and Rat Summer, a beautiful graphic made by Annabelle Pan featuring the lovely rat wearing his flip-flops. However, there’s no blurb to go along with it, and I hated to waste this beautiful graphic that Annabelle had made. “Does anyone want to write a blurb on “rat summer?” I ask. Everyone looks around, confused. “What is rat summer?” Lucy Panicacci asks. I stop to think. What IS rat summer? I asked her to scour TikTok for info. “Katie…rat summer isn’t a thing,” Lucy tells me a few minutes later. Uh oh. I came to the slow realization that I just made Annabelle create a graphic for a meme that didn’t even exist. I felt so bad and told her this piece of artwork must be reused somehow. “I’ll write a humor article on it next cycle,” I promised her. So here I am, writing about rat summer. 

I know that not enough people will read this paper to begin a trend, but I will try nonetheless. Rat Summer should absolutely be a meme. It’s so catchy. Rat Summer. What’s not to love? I want to be a carefree rat on the beach, tanning (wait, never mind, rats can’t tan), drinking my ice-cold lemonade in my flip-flops and sunglasses. Rat Summer could be a movement. It could represent living your best life in summer, with no concern for putting effort into your appearance. It could also represent letting go of reality because, remember, you’re a rat wearing flip-flops. 

I feel like rat summer just works logically in my mind. This summer, I absolutely want to be a river rat floating down a nice alpine stream in my inflatable tube. Or a road rat, spending time with my friends on our senior road trip. Lake rat, sun rat, pool rat, beach rat, gym rat, you name it. It may not be the year of the Rat, but it certainly can be the rat summer.