Summer is a wonderful time for typical tourist day trips...

That is, of course, unless you live in a tourist town. If you do, you despise the moment that the imaginary summer gates open and let in the hundreds of thousands of absent-minded beachgoers.

Here are a few things you can expect for the summer if you’re a year-round resident of a popular tourist town:

1. Traffic. Insane, improbable traffic.

Compared to the one-car-on-a-state-highway winters, the bumper-to-bumper nightmare that is summertime traffic can turn a two-minute trip to the grocery store a thirty-minute extravaganza. And if there’s a bridge nearby, not only do you get stuck in that horrible car-related traffic, but you also get stuck for an additional ten minutes on top of it all.

2. Parking six blocks away from your house because there are already two cars in the driveway.

And one of them isn’t even yours. Sound ridiculous? It’s beyond that. I’ve seen people park on lawns, sidewalks, and even in empty neighbor’s driveways just so they can have a day at the beach. If you live in town, it’s just easier to get up at six in the morning, find a spot nearby, park your car there, and not leave the house for the rest of the day. Have to go to the bank? Not today you don’t.

3. People don't know how to use a crosswalk.

You’re supposed to walk in them. Not alongside of them. Not five feet to the left of them. They’re made for a reason, but apparently, day-trippers were never taught that lesson. It seems like we should just get rid of crosswalks, since everybody just wants to walk across town wherever is convenient for them.

4. People don't know how to use a sidewalk, either.

Seriously? It’s right there next to you, and you can walk on the wrong side of the street if you so choose to use a sidewalk. But, unfortunately, so many tourists decide to ignore the convenient sidewalks and walk dead-center in the middle of the street. Do they remember that cars exist? Or do they simply not care about whether they live or die?

5. Your front lawn has become a dumpster.

On par with the sidewalk misunderstanding, bennies like to believe that every piece of land that isn’t sidewalk is a dumping ground. Some items you can find on your property in the summer includes: dirty diapers, abandoned life vests, half-eaten sandwiches, ride tickets, a lonely flip-flop, used condoms, and oh, yeah, actual tourists, fast asleep beside your garden gnome.

6. Your front lawn has become a bathroom.

If you thought people dumping crap on your lawn was bad, just picture people actually crapping on your lawn. Not even in one of your bushes, but in the dead-center of your pretty, freshly mowed grass. And if it’s late at night, people might host literal pissing contests to see how many petunias they can knock out. The worst part? There are portable bathrooms a block away from your house.

7. Every local becomes a tour guide during the day.

We can all handle someone asking for directions every once in awhile because, let’s face it, Google Maps isn’t always the easiest to navigate. However, after the first twenty people asking where the beach/drugstore/boardwalk is, it’s very easy to start getting aggravated. We’re not tour guides. We’re locals. We’re not here to help you make up that grand walking trip you missed in Italy. Seriously, stop parking in the middle of the street to roll down your window and shout questions at me from my bench fifteen feet away.

8. Some people have a lot to say after midnight.

Oh, do they ever. Most bars have a curfew around two in the morning, but even if they don’t, a lot of bennies overstaying their visit like to blunder about the streets in a state of semi-exuberant inebriation. They prefer to talk to their companions, from across the street, and say whatever comes to mind in the loudest, most noise-complaint worthy manner. If they want to shout foul language at the top of their lungs, they go right for it, without paying consideration to the resident five-year-olds being woken up by it. Ugh.

9. There's a huge lack in courtesy.

You’d think that if people were staying in someone else’s hometown for a week to enjoy a vacation, they’d be a lot nicer to other people around them, right? After all, everyone’s just trying to have a good time. However, most visitors find that they left their manners back on their own kitchen tables, and instead choose to be thoughtless and rude, quite frankly, to the others surrounding them. They yell at kids on the beach, at people in line for the bathroom, and make snide comments to the overworked teenagers who help make their vacation as lax as possible. Maybe they should get that imprudent behavior in check.

10. And finally, there's a lot more police activity than usual.

The bennies and beach-bums alike tend to be a little on the reckless side when it comes to having fun. If you’ve read this entire list, and thought that all of these things went ignored by law enforcement, you’re not entirely wrong. There are so many tourists doing so many stupid things that it’s impossible to catch them all. Yet, the local police forces really try to pull their weight when summer comes around, and stop toruists from causing too much damage. There are sirens and flashing lights everywhere during the summertime, and luckily for us locals, the worst of the tourists don’t get many opportunities to make our summers miserable before they get caught. The best part: they’re appalled that they actually have to pay the consequences for “just having a little fun”.

**This article was written from the personal experience of a Jersey Shore resident.