Summer 101

We are two weeks into vacation and already my kids are bored.  They sleep, they watch television, and occasionally they eat.  If I remind them.  It is starting to drive me crazy.  Their choices when asked what they want to do range from "shopping" to "go get something to eat".  We have a pool outside our house and a beach a half a mile away, but Madison doesn't want to get sunburned and Darcy is bored unless she has a friend to entertain her.  All of this is foreign to me because back in my day when the last school bell rang we were gone.  Gone out of the house and away from any adults.

My neighborhood was chock full of kids that all interacted with one another.  We may have split off into sexes, but eventually we all came together to play sports or games to pit the sexes against each other.  We even got the boys to play superheros with us and to put on plays and musicals in my backyard.  Every time I hear the Four Season's December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) I think of my my neighbor across the street singing that song with his brother and my brother as his backup group.  I probably had something on them to make them participate, but they showed up for the daily practices.

If we got tired of something we made up something else. Some of our best games were the ones we invented. We played a game called Thunder & Lightning with a Frisbee in my backyard and Tennis Baseball in the street. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood giving tours, each area a different country. We had a small woods in our neighborhood that we hung out in building forts across the creek and having wars. We never went inside if we could help it, drinking from hoses in yards. If the weather was bad we played board games and cards at someone's house, but the television was never an option.

As we got older our parents put us into activities. I was on a summer swim team and took tennis lessons. My brother swam and played golfed during the day and baseball in the evening. I worked the concession stand and the audio booth during his games. We were all involved. At night we all gathered to shoot hoops or play four square in the street.  I'm not sure I even watched television in the summer because we were tired after playing outside all day.

Yesterday while working on this entry I had the following conversation on the way to the orthodontist:

Darcy: "What day do we go to Indiana?"

Me: "We leave on a Wednesday, and just so you know all electronics will be left here at home."

Madison: "What? No!"

Darcy: "Uh, no!"

Me: "Yes. You guys are going to have the kind of summer vacation that I use to have. We are going back in time."

Madison: "Dad doesn't like it when we don't have our phone."

Darcy: "Yeah, Dad isn't going to be happy with that."

Me: "I don't mean your phones. You can bring your phones, but they are only to be used for talking like a phone was used back in my day."

Madison: "Then you can't use your phone either."

Me: "I will use it for talking and maybe directions."

Madison: "See. That isn't fair. You could use a map instead of your phone."

Me: "Good idea. Okay, we'll use a map. You two can work on reading maps."

Darcy: "This is going to be boring."

Me: "No. You can talk and look out the window and play games like the "license plate" game or the "abc" game.

Darcy : "We've done that before. We do that."

Madison: "But you and Kelly are going to want to talk."

Me: "Exactly! And you can participate in that conversation."

Madison: "But you will want some privacy and instead you'll have us listening to you all the time."

Me: "Well, back in my day we had headphones with our...what was that thing...Walkman! You can use a Walkman."

Darcy: "Uh huh. And your going to get us one of those?"

Me: "Yes! On Ebay."