When I was 10, the best day of my life was the first day of summer. I woke that day to the foreign silence of parental distance. I’d never experienced a morning without someone yelling “Breakfast!” or “Do you know what a comb is?” much less “Feed your rabbits before I make dinner plans outta them.” My mother finally showed up at my bedroom door to offer some guidance, “Get your breakfast whenever you feel like it, honey.”
The sweet taste of liberation smothered the metallic morning breath of my braces. I had a banana seat bike to roam my ten mile home turf, a sewage creek running to the east, busy train tracks to the south, Peppy’s Junk Yard to the west and a Tasty Freeze up top. It was 1980, over-scheduling was done in doctor’s offices, camps were for criminals pounding rocks, and playdate was a word that had not been compounded yet. My mission: work myself into a grand state of boredom and discover how delicious it was.
All of that ended on the first day of summer in my 15th year. My alarm clock went off and I realized “I’m employed now!” Schweet-o-rama?!? But putting on that orange striped Speedy’s Pizza uniform felt like I’d scrubbed the color out of my lazy summer dreams. As I grieved the passing of my first summer love, Mr. Boredom, my mind offered up this little tidbit; don’t worry; you’ll doze through a summer again, in 2040. But instead of riding your bike through musky culverts, you’ll sit on some porch with your waistband around your nipples and contemplate the state of the weather. That’s pretty dark material for any 15 year old to swallow. From then on, my summers were air conditioned days of labor, wishing I was outside charging the neighbor kids a quarter to watch my pet crawdad have it out with a bucket load of garter snakes.
Now I’m a mother with two school age kids whose school year is as booked as a mammogram clinic. Last year my nine year old woke on that first summer day at 7 a.m., her freedom cycle full upon her, and asked when our carpooling would commence. “I’m seriously BORED!” she cried, as if “nothing to do” equaled mental illness. Great! The highlights of my childhood are boomeranging back to me now with morphed teeth and a pair of Freddy Krueger claws.
For 93 days I played Summer Entertainment Booking Agent for these two unimaginative creatures, who’d take to rolling around on my carpet, begging for a straight shot of Ambien. I couldn’t help it! That “B” word was a calling card to my spastic-Mom-mode; “Isn’t your generation supposed to be the great exterminator of boredom? You’ve got more gadgets than MacGyver. Lock yourself in your bedroom with your I-phone, I-pad, I-touch, I-pod or I’m going to show you my I-scream! Go bike your two streets of independence! Go scooter until you find another kid foolish enough to brave this 100 degree heat! I don’t care if you’ve never been formally introduced to them for a playdate! You will play with that child until a police squad hunts you down…AND you will like it!”
This year I started anticipating Mr. Boredom on Martin Luther King Day. Since the techniques of blowing, wasting, fiddling and pissing away time are beyond my children’s capabilities, I brought out the big guns; a bold Sharpie, the phone and the Summer Camp Guide. I’ve booked playdates, gobbled up every last available camp slot (“Not till August? Will I get a refund if my son gets tossed over our deck by his sister before then?”), and elbowed my way through the other desperate moms in the student activity book aisle of Barnes & Noble.
Yet I will admit, like all hot summer romances, I’ve got a bit of nostalgia for old Mr. B. So on this, my 40th first-day-of-summer, I plan to snuggle my early birds back into their beds as the birds sing to the rising sun. “Hey, did you know there are these really smart guys called Snow Patrol? They came up with this great game. All we do is waste time… chasing cars… around our heads.
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Other Sloan Images Articles:
- Among the trees… the leaves… :: Omaha Family Photographs
- There are TWO…
- I hope you never lose your sense of wonder… :: Omaha Children’s Photographer
- Mr. Nyle and Ms. Sydney :: Omaha Children’s Photographer
- I can only share one…
- Where the story begins…
by Christina
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