When did lazy summers turn into what-weekend-don’t-we-have-something summers??

Today I was fondly thinking about summers in between middle school and high school. My sister and I would sleep in, get up and make awesome breakfast dishes, then usually dress in our best exercise gear and head to the living room to catch The Grind on MTV and bust out some moves before lunch.

Then it was always a call, yes a call, no text back then, to our friends on the block to see what the plan was for the day. Sometimes it was swimming, laying out, making up a dance, pretending we were gymnasts on our makeshift apparatuses, walking up the hill to get a slush, playing capture the flag. There was NEVER a day that we didn’t do something fun. Every day smelled like fresh-cut grass, the sun shone brightly and beautifully, the wind blew through our perfect chlorine-streaked hair, and hours seemed endless.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED??? It’s May and I’m already realizing I have like two free weekends before Labor Day. I don’t know what transpires from childhood to adulthood, but events just keep inserting themselves into your once blissful summer life. Of course when we’re kids, we have the whole week, and now it’s just Saturday and Sunday. And boy are those days precious. Vacations are a thing of the past for most of us. If we’re lucky, we might go somewhere every couple of years, so we don’t even have that to look forward to anymore. And vacations as an adult aren’t as fun anyway because you are doing all the packing and planning and driving, while the kids are spending all the money.

From graduations, to birthday parties, to showers, to weddings, to family reunions, and everything in between, I’m just trying to figure out if we can get to Idelwild (a local amusement park) one day, or go for a long day trip just to get away from it all.

And I’ve realized that my summers will only get busier as we add more kids to the family, and they start their own activities and events.

So for my time machine wish of the day, I’d love to go back to a summer when I was 13 or 14 years old. A summer when my whole life was in front of me. In fact, maybe that’s what made those summers so sweet. Life was still an unwritten book. There was no job holding us down, or mortgage payment looming. We were just kids, with nothing but time. And since we didn’t have any of this technology back then, we were always outside, always exploring, taking in the fresh air, living life to the fullest, not jut TWEETING about it.

I miss that fresh air. I miss the smell of hot dogs on a grill when I’m not the one cooking, I miss walking down to the baseball field to watch the cute older boys, I miss slushies, I miss dancing in the street. I miss it all.

Even when adults tell you to “enjoy this time of your life,” we never listen. We were in a hurry to grow up and we forgot to relish in the utter joy of being a kid. I guess I can try to tell my son the same thing when he gets to that age, and maybe if I’m lucky, it will sink in.

I’m going to go blast some 2 Unlimited, slurp a cherry slush, and do some cartwheels in my backyard for nostalgia. NOT. DUH. (Insert other 90’s cool slang here).