Being allegedly grown-up is less fun than it was made out to be when you had dreams of getting out of your parents' house and doing whatever you damn well wanted. Especially in summer. Sure, now we have cocktails, pets, families, friends. No one is ostracizing you because you are in the band or your mom refused you to buy you a Frankie Goes to Hollywood shirt or you wrote a report on your favorite song and chose not Hungry Like The Wolf but Wake Up Little Susie.......by Simon and Garfunkel. But I digress because really those were not things that happened in summer.
In summer, you woke up early and read. Sometimes you woke up too early and read books that featured subject matters too advanced for your tender years, resulting in uncomfortable "ask your mother" answers from your dad as he left for work and frightening visions of becoming a woman and needing to wear belted sanitary pads. (I'm talking to you, Margaret.) But mostly you just hung with your pals getting Great Brained and Anne of Green Gabled which caused no problems for anyone. Then maybe you whipped out the biggin's Crayola 64 or the ginormo one with the sharpener in the back and colored your Barbie coloring book like it was a Bennetton ad (Burnt Sienna? Mahoghany? Flesh?) Then of course, time to redecorate the dollhouse with filched pieces of wallpaper from Hechinger's and self-crocheted rugs. You made wicked potholders on your awesome loom and then forced every neighbor and relative you came across to use them. You watched 84,000 episodes of Little House on the Prairie and 84,000 MTV vids and ate eggs and bacon or cocoa puffs or golden grahams for breakfast.
Tough morning--but then you dealt with the biggest decision of the day. How would you spend the afternoon? Would you spend it at the pool, pretending to be a mermaid (the pre-Disney kind) until that dreaded of all half-hour periods, the adult swim, at which point you would go and pump scary-higher than anyone else on the swings and maybe grab up some Fun Dip? Would you cruise the hood on your bike, gathering buddies and then playing such inventive and brilliant games as "Orphans of the Wind" or "Children of the Mafia" until someone cried and you got in trouble for your overactive imagination? Would you go to the $1 movies and see some gem like The Money Pit? Would you start a Monopoly game on the dining room table that would last for days as you tried (unsuccessfully) to hone your wheeling and dealing real estate skills? Would you build a fort? Run through the sheets hanging on the line cause it was washday? Go to the mall and cruise and get pizza and some purple eyeshadow at Canary and the Elephant or stickers for one of your four albums from Puff n Stuff? Would you go to the park and play whiffleball, or your cousins' and while your moms chatted and cocktailed you would run like a little urchin through the streets, kicking cans and climbing fences and roller skating? Would you be banished to the coolness of the basement that always smelled and play dress-up with your mom's awesome 70s tea gowns and granny boots? Or would you just lay in the sunshiny sweet grass somewhere and star up at the sky and dream about when this boring endless summer would end and the fall of your life would start?
So many possibilities, and every day the same but different, and every day good. Now every day is the same and not so different and not so good. But you can't discredit the booze.......being all growed-up does have some perks. Let me know if you want to come over and play spin the bottle.
That sun sweet grass you speak of was greener than the grass of today...is that what you're saying?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is 30 plus years from now today's grass will be the feel you're longing for between your toes.
Unfortunately the grass in 30 years will be that of a parking lot.