Idyllic Idleness
So all us little hooligans would roll back into school come September and invariably our new teacher would give us our first homework assignment to write what we’d done during our summer break. Three months of unstructured play and now we 4th graders or 6th graders or whatever grade were supposed to compose an essay to describe idyllic idleness.
It didn’t exactly ruin it for us, that’s not how it felt, it just didn’t work, like jamming a square peg into a round hole. Maybe Miss Crenshaw went to Italy with her paramour and toured Rome and the ruins, adult organized vacation time, we didn’t know and we couldn’t make her write that essay, that’s for sure, but how were we supposed to scribble out on #2 pencils an interesting couple of wide spaced pages all those sandlot whiffle ball games and the bike riding or those long treks in all directions past the creeks and ponds or through the woods beyond the new houses or that time we went so far nothing was familiar and it took hours to find our way back home? We spent whole afternoons playing marbles, fer chrissake! We’d kill an entire day trading baseball cards or swapping old musty comic books, what are you going to say to Miss C. about that?
Sure, there was the time Joey Vandiver fell off his bike and broke his arm — he had a story. About two sentences before the rest of his vacation he hauled his arm around in a cast he carried in a dirty filthy sling. What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Not Much!!
We all signed our names on Joey’s cast. Did we all write that down on our essay? Were we going to be graded on all that NOTHING we did when we should’ve gone to Yellowstone National Park or 6 Flags over Atlanta? I shouldn’t have to tell you, I hated going back to school. And that first assignment should tell you all you need to know about WHY I hated to go back to school. Vacations are exactly like freedom. You don’t have to do a damn thing. And you don’t feel guilty either.
Until you go back. Today we’re going back and this is my essay…..
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I don’t think many kids get that kind of idleness anymore. In summer, my mother would feed us breakfast and send us out to play. We were warned not to return until lunch. She rarely knew what we were doing on days like that. It seems incredible to me now. In other news, my sister gave me a notebook for Christmas that said on the cover: It would kill me if I had to get a real job.
Happy New Year!
Most of my friends’ kids get their ‘free’ time booked up with soccer camp, ballet lessons, art classes, all that extracurricular stuff the parents think will make them more well-rounded children. No doubt it will make them nicely neurotic. Structured and educational, that’s the ticket to success. Nowadays we look askance at parents who let their kids go anywhere without adult supervision. Bad parents! But then, who am I to judge? No kids but myself. And I’m not sure how well I raised him….