Just when we thought it was safe to go back to the Long Island shore and enjoy an uninterrupted slew of soothing summer weekends at the beach ...Bam!! Kapow!! Zoinks!! ... the babies are attacking!! "Attention!! All you 30-somethings, please get off that Hampton Jitney and head straight to your local Baby Gap. Your weekend plans have been canceled. Go visit your friends and smile at their newborns immediately."

My wife and I thought we were in the clear when we looked at our combined calendar last month and for the first time in years saw only one wedding on our social schedule (albeit an affair planned for Memorial Day weekend, gritting teeth - mine). Like prisoners dreaming up an agenda for their first day of freedom, we planned to take advantage of our first summer of consecutive commitmentless weekends with trips to the Hamptons, the Berkshires, the Jersey Shore, and maybe even ... if we were lucky, the living room.

Then, all of a sudden, we received warnings to get off the beach. Not through a lifeguard's megaphone, but via little postcards announcing "It's a Girl!" or cleverly wrapped chocolate bars announcing "Here he is." A few congratulatory phone calls later and our wonderfully empty weekend dance card was chock full of baby visits and infant birthday parties. Our parole papers had been lost in the mail.

I did not go down without a fight, of course. After learning that my summer was stolen from me, I did what any red-blooded American husband would do, I lashed out at my wife. "Why the heck do we have to visit them? Can't we see the kid after Labor Day? He'll still be there."

Not a winning argument. Luckily she didn't throw the good silverware at me.

I brought up the fact that wedding gifts and thank you notes can be given up to a year after the affair.

Not a winning argument either. She pegged me with the good silverware that time.

As I nursed my wounds, my wife explained to me that babies and their parents must be visited as soon after delivery as possible. Not because they get cold, like Domino's pizza, but "because that is what normal people do."

Sensing she was out of silverware and seeing my summer slip away, I boldly announced a new "Greenberg Doctrine": "If you ask me, the reason why you have to go see all these babies first is for the same reason I wanted to see Star Wars on the opening weekend, so I can tell my friends. Furthermore, our "lovely" friends never even pay attention to us when we get to their damn house since they are so busy fussing with the kid. For all our trouble in showing up, they don't even know we're there! And from now on, I refuse to make any baby visits in between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I'll see all the kids after Labor Day. I'm going to the beach."

Epilogue: The Greenberg Doctrine was shot down in a hail of wedding china. Its author was last seen at a Baby Gap, stocking up on cute little baby clothing and crazily shouting at the cashier, "Summer is for recreation, winter is for procreation!"