Summer time, and the living is easy....

 Today is the 5th day of the 24th week, the 13th day of the 6th month, the 165th day of 2024 [with only 194 shopping days until Christmas], and:

• Golf Cart Day - created last year to celebrate E-Z-Go's 70th Anniversary 
• International Albinism Awareness Day
• International Axe Throwing Day
• LBGQIA+ Equal Pay Awareness Day
• National Career Nursing Assistants' Day
• National Cupcake Lover's Day
• National Doe B Day
• National Kitchen Klutzes of American Day
• Outdoor Marketing Day
• Random Acts of Light Day
• Roller Coaster Day
• Sewing Machine Day - the day that Thomas Saint of England took out the first patent back in 1790 for the first complete sewing machine 
• Weed Your Garden Day

Quote of the day:

No more pencils

No more books

No more teacher's dirty looks!

~ a childhood ditty we used to sing.  According to Wikipedia, this particular "traditional rhyme" can be found back as early as 1932, in the Michigan Education Journal which called it "the old glad song that we hear every spring."    Stephen Chbosky, in The Perks of Being a Wallflower added, "when the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell". 

Today is the last day of school in Montgomery County; tomorrow is the last day of school for my grandkids, which has me remembering how it felt to start summer vacation when I was young, before my teens when it mean taking on my summer job to save for college....

How long the time between June and September stretched!  At 11 years old, the gap between 5th and 6th grade made up 1.9% of my entire life, which was almost unfathomable to me.  Back in those days, working moms were not very common, and that meant there weren't any conversations about about "child care" needing to be arranged.  My family was blue collar and didn't have the money to go on vacation - a couple of day trips to the ocean were all that was probably going to happen.  Summer camp?  That was something I read about in books.  Pool?  There wasn't one nearby.  

So, what did we DO?  Played - but had to be home when the street lights came on.  There weren't many kids in my neighborhood my age, and I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time amusing myself.  I remember spending entire afternoons whizzing about the neighborhood on my English Racer, and breaking my parents' rule about not crossing Martin Blvd to drive around that undeveloped area after the race track [not featured in this article about Maryland's lost race tracks, it was for trotters] closed.   My mother limited my reading to one book or magazine a day, and I spent a great deal of time doing that.  Walking to the library and back, always lugging a pile of books.  Going to the Twin Kiss for soft ice cream, and the best root beer around.  Every summer I had a banana split plastic boat filled with Mexican Roses from Grandmom Riley's driveway, where they grew profusely, on my window sill and I remember counting the blooms every day.  Going to the movie at Aero Acres with my mother, and sitting in there, soaking up the air conditioning because we only had fans at home.  Whining that I am bored, and being told that if I couldn't find something to do, I would be given something to do [which always meant chores].  Getting to stay with each of my Grandmothers for a week, although my mother refused to let me go fishing on Grandpop's boat.  I always wished that I could go because my cousins did!

I was always ready to go back to school in September - it was always the week after Labor day - and I always was surprised at how much I had forgotten in those couple of months as the teacher started their reviews.  And when asked what I did during the summer, invariably answered "nothing really".  

My summers were not halcyon idylls, but from my vantage point all these decades later,  I remember the joy of the last day of school and how I spent those hot summer days just living.  I just didn't appreciate or realize how rare the time off was back then ...