Every time summer comes around, I think about my childhood, when I was fortunate enough to wake up every morning with nothing to do.
I didn't have to attend any camps or enrichment programs, sign up for arts and crafts courses, or go on any scheduled nature hikes. Instead, I sat on my front steps with my next-door neighbor and asked her what she wanted to do, to which she would reply: "I don't know, what do you want to do?"
We could usually come up with something. One time, we spent a whole day stocking our start-up perfume-making business, snapping the largest buds off my dad's prized rosebushes and putting them in sandwich bags filled with hose water. Then we hid the bags in the back of her shed and forgot about them until they fermented into rose-scented embalming fluid.
We also liked to dress up in musty gowns we had purchased at the Lighthouse for the Blind fundraising sale (fill a paper bag for a dollar) and invent characters for ourselves. Then we would parade for hours around the neighborhood in character, interacting with each other and whoever was unfortunate enough to cross our paths. At the time, I played the guitar, so I often played accompaniment on the many elaborate three-chord musicals we wrote featuring our neighbors. It was summer stock on a shoestring.
For a couple of weeks, we amused ourselves as spectators, watching our brothers decorate a neighbor's yard with men's underpants. But that story's a column unto itself.
Nights, we would be invited to play a brutal game called "ring-a-levio" with the older, high school-age neighborhood kids. Ring-a-levio was like tag, only played on bicycles before the invention of bike helmets. This might explain some of the neighborhood gang's current short-term memory issues.
Basically, you had to hunt down a member of the opposite team, yank him off his bicycle and shout: "Caught, caught, ring-a-levio, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3." If the captive managed to wrench loose of your grip before the entire phrase was spoken, he was free. But usually injured.
It was a harsh game, but we always played because it was the only activity in which the high school kids included us. Foolishly, my friend and I believed that if we were good sports, we just might get invited to one of their pool parties at the end of the summer. Then we could regale those handsome high-school boys with our paperdoll physiques in our first-ever bikinis.
It never happened. Thank God.
