LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMPlite: What I Did During My Summer Vacation |
by Glen Pruitt |
Summer is almost over. Contrary to the calendar that argues that Autumn doesnt officially begin for another three weeks, our hearts know that the remaining days of Summer are few. There are signs of it everywhere literally! "Back To School" sales in every store provide inescapable reminders that a new school year is approaching. Yes, before you could go "Back To School", you had to go "Back To School SHOPPING"! As a kid, that was one of my favorite shopping excursions. My mother would load my sister, two brothers and I into the car and off we would go to the local department store. Most of the shopping was done quickly. Pencils, pens, notebook paper theres not a lot of choice there. You picked it up, you threw it into the shopping cart, DONE. The exciting part was selecting the items where you actually did have a choice. The hardest decision to make? The selection of a lunch box. I would like to be able to say that we kids spent hours choosing just the right lunch box, the one that expressed our personalities or made a statement about what was important to us as individuals. My mother was a bit more practical than that. While she gave us the power to choose, she also only gave us five minutes in which to choose! Its amazing how having a deadline helps motivate people to get the job done! So in five minutes we would make the perfect choice. My favorite lunch box was the one that I had in second grade. It was a "Disney On Parade" metal lunch box, featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy! The following year I had a G.I. Joe lunch box. My biggest regret? Not keeping those old lunch boxes, which today are considered collectibles and are worth a lot of money! On the first day of school, I would excitedly head back to the classroom with my book bag in one hand and my new lunch box in the other. There I would be confronted with another of the "Back To School" traditions: the "What I Did During Summer Vacation" essay. This tradition was one that I didnt look on so favorably. First, I felt that I had never done anything very exciting. My family rarely took summer trips, so most of my summer days were spent at home, usually reading or hanging around with my brothers. I remember that one summer we boys built a "bachelors pad" in the back yard (remember, it WAS the Late Sixties/Early Seventies!) We framed out the structure using scrap wood we found, covering the frame with old burlap bags that we stapled into place. Actually, Im not sure that I can really call it a "structure" it was much too humble for such a formal word! But we had fun building it and playing in it. My parents were good sports to put up with having such an eyesore in the yard, but at least we built it out back and out of sight. My brothers and I were establishing our independence we just wanted to be close enough to enjoy all the comforts of home, too! But writing about a "Bachelors Pad" in my essay at school? Never! The other kids would have laughed at me. And who could write a hundred words about that anyway? Back then, the thought of writing a hundred words about anything seemed insurmountable. I am sure that these "Summer Vacation Essay" assignments are what really taught us school children how to use adjectives and adverbs. Cmon, admit it we all used as many "verys" as we could to pump up the word count. For instance, "It was a hot summer" became "It was a very, very, very hot summer". Five words became eight words, which meant that there were only ninety-two more words to go! Little did I know that years later I would end up writing articles every two weeks that were a THOUSAND words long! It would have been unbelievable to my young mind. Yet here I am, writing for "Letters From CAMP Rehoboth" (which is a very, very, very, very good magazine - hmmm, only two hundred and eighty-eight more words to go in this article!) I have been contributing articles to "Letters" for two years now and have probably written over 20,000 words for my editor. Gee, if Steve were paying me a dollar a word, I would be a rich man. Id even be happy with fifty cents a word. How about a quarter a word, Steve? Yeah, I know, I should take the quarter and call somebody who cares, right? But even telephone calls are thirty-five cents apiece these days! Anyway, those "What I Did During Summer Vacation" essays werent just torture methods devised by evil English teachers. Writing those essays helped students to bring a sense of closure to the summer and to prepare us for a new season in our lives. I was reading an article the other day that made a similar point. It argued that since ancient times, September has marked the beginning of the real new year, a time for reflection, reconnection, and resolution. Labor Day is the real New Years. So when the autumn leaves begin to change, you could say that its time to turn over a personal new leaf. It all comes back to that clean slate (or clean piece of notebook paper, if you will). So I encourage you to make some "September Resolutions" for this new year. Promise yourself to have a little bit more fun. Promise yourself to try something new. Promise yourself to simplify your life. Promise yourself to express gratitude a little more often. These resolutions may bring some new joy into your life, and they have one distinct advantage over the typical New Years Eve resolutions: since no one is expecting you to make them, no one will know if you break them! |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 8, No. 12, August 28, 1998. |