summers of yore June 25, 2008
Oh, how I long for the summers of yore…for days spent lounging by the pool, exotic vacations, handsome devils, and fancy jewelery.
Wait…no, scratch that. My summers were never like that. I’m confusing my life with a Mary Higgins Clark novel again.
My summers, instead, were spent doing yardwork.
(There was one year in which we had a problem with the septic tank, and had to get a new one installed - or something like that. While we were at it, my dad decided to have the giant pine tree that was in front of our house removed, too. Which meant that our lawn turned into dirt. Literally - no grass, just dirt. And rocks. Lots, and lots of rocks. That was the summer that the Sixth Sense came out, and it was also the summer that my family and I spent pulling those rocks out of the front yard. True story. Almost every day - except for stormy ones! - we were out there, picking rocks.)
Or looking up vocabulary words. (My older brother and sister can attest to the fact that my younger brother and I were luckily. When they were kids, they were each given a new crossword puzzle a week, with a week to finish it. But my younger brother and I usually had to find words that we didn’t know - I don’t remember how many a week, say, between 10 and 50, - look them up, write down the definition, and then give them to my dad, who would make a quiz for us to take when the week was through.)
I remember (probably from 12 on or so) that my brothers would be told to do something constructive, like read, while I would be told to do something constructive, like go outside. I liked going outside, but I was a voracious reader. Had I my way, I’d sit inside for days at a time reading away. We’d go to the library and leave with huge stacks of books. Those were the days of the Babysitter’s Club, Animorphs, Sweet Valley, and the like - those series with hundreds of books in them, averaging a hundred to two hundred pages a piece, and I could get through five to ten of them a day.
We do have a pool, and have had one since 1991. And we did get to go swimming, no worries there.
Every year though, summer gets less and less fun. I know that makes sense, as I’m getting closer to adulthood, with a real job, with no summer vacation. This year I’m taking classes and working. Little pool time.
Oh well. I guess I’ll enjoy what little time I have left.
