Remembering Summer as a Kid
The other night I was laying in bed, lost in memories of what it was like to be a kid in elementary school. Remember those days? I remember how the last day of school felt. How the excitement of the pending summer break was barely contained inside your chest, threatening to burst its way in a fit of celebration. We always stacked our desks and chairs along the walls of the room. All the book were put away in the cabinets, the wall were stripped of any posters or student artwork, the blackboard was washed clean. We would sit around on the floor as a group, signing year books (“Stay rad! – Brett”, “Have a dude-acle summer! – Joey”) and talking about what our plans were for the next few months. Watching the clock tick down, second by agonizing second, waiting for that 3:00 buzzer that spelled, truly, the greatest freedom most of us will ever experience.
This was my experience heading into the summer after 5th grade. I hadn’t the same freedom before, and not again since. 4th grade I suppose I was still “too young” to appreciate the days stretched before me, and by 6th grade I was nervous about starting junior high. 5th grade though, man that was the year. I had my best friend, Jon, and we knew, even if we didn’t realize it, that this was our last chance to be a kid. By the end of this summer our parents would start thinking of us a junior high kids – almost young adults! – and the pressure would be on to start behaving mature. This year though, we were still just kids. It was still cool to have the biggest collection of G.I. Joe figures and vehicles. It was still cool to play with Matchbox cars in the dirt. It was especially cool to have larger boundaries, as they were called in my family, to where we could ride our bikes without having to ask permission. 5th grade meant we had almost 1/2 a square mile of neighborhood that was ours, and we traveled every inch of it.
The best part of that summer was when the guy who used to live next door to my family moved out and accidentally left the door to his now-vacant garage unlocked. That garage became my and Jon’s clubhouse. We started by moving our water supply into the garage. It was just a large thermos with a pump on top that was designed for dispensing tea or something at a picnic. We would fill it from the hose of whatever house we were near and take it to the clubhouse. Next, we set up a Matchbox car chop-shop on the workbench the previous owner had left behind on which we would, using the paint-pens from our model paint sets, give all of our cars a fresh new look (except the Ferrari Testarosa, oh no, nobody touches my Testarosa!). Finally, the garage was a base for the elite squadron of GI Joe commandos that we deployed to protect the world.
We never did tell our parents that Gene had left the garage unlocked, they would probably have told us it was unsafe, or that we were trespassing, and locked the door on us. Instead, we spent the summer feeling like ninjas sneaking into the garage without being seen.It was my first secret hideout. Eventually, as days are wont to do, the days got shorter and cooler, and the next thing we knew somebody had purchased the house, taking away the clubhouse/shop/base. Then school started, and we started down the path to adulthood. Jon’s family eventually moved away and he and I lost contact, then my family moved a year later, but I’ll always remember that summer and my last taste of pure freedom.
