Every college student is acutely aware of the little anecdotes, songs, movies and bars that, while not individually that important, in the collective, represent exactly what makes the memories of a great summer. I challenge anyone to listen to “Hips Don’t Lie” three years from now and not immediately and uncontrollably reminisce about the summer of 2006.

Summer friendships are of a unique variety. They are forged out of late night antics in parking lots, seeing if I can hit a driver as far as my friends can hit a putter, barbecues on the beach, committing every beer special in White Plains’ bars to memory, hitting on any girl with a pulse —just to name a few impersonal, random examples. Out of these heat- and youth-induced exploits, we develop certain jokes that are very particular to our summer cohorts.

Unfortunately, I suspect social malfeasance from some of us, and I am not entirely innocent myself. I have occasionally caught myself whipping out a joke that my friend, let’s just call him “Andrew,” used on a girl at a bar in the city, on a friend of mine at school. This recycling of summer anecdotes is unacceptable for a variety of reasons.

I have a particular friend, we’ll use a pseudonym (maybe) and call him “Eric,” who lives a mile away from me at home and, roughly a mile from me at school as well. Oddly, though we spent hours playing “how old do you suspect she is” this summer, eating Italian ices in Westchester after our respective internships were over, we seldom hang out at school because of incongruent schedules and social lives.

Although I have no evidence to support my claim, I suspect Eric may recycle some of the social gags my friends and I conjured up this summer, dropping them on his school friends, possibly artificially inflating their perception of his wit and popularity. We all do it, and it needs to be curtailed.

Even the thievery of wits is not really the reason recycling summer jokes and anecdotes unto unwitting college friends is a most egregious social crime. We must respect the spirit and integrity of summer, for it holds a distinct and important place in the construction of our lives and memories.

Just think about it: People getting in their tinted Accords, tanning lotion in the back — “I LOVE THIS SONG!” when Sean Paul comes on Z100. Typical conversation you might overhear: “Yo, Jimmy, don’t you have to work today?” “Nah I got the day off.” “Oh word?! Let’s go to the Jersey shore.” The jokery, songs, late night cruising debauchery — it all becomes the trailer for a collective, infectious, positive, joyous energy in the region that occurs only in the summer, and that we have the great fortune of experiencing.

We must respect our summers, and not let the drudgery of school work, graduate applications and job fairs whittle away at the stuff that makes them great. So don’t recycle your friends’ jokes from the summer. It just ain’t right.

Joe Galante-Eisenberg is a senior economics major.