Cruel, cruel summer
Hello to the months of July and August! I see you there, peeking around the corner. Are you dressed yet? It\’s time to go. Put a double-knot in those shoes and slick you hair back, summer\’s coming.
Sometimes I think summer lives elsewhere and only comes up here for a vacation. And just like in the middle of a long vacation, there are a few moments in July when it feels like summer will stay forever. But most of the time you know it\’s nothing but a brief, blooming flower.
The summer between first and second grade is the longest one of your life. I remember spending hours building gutter-dams with little twigs; if you have time to do that, you have time to do everything.
Can you imagine the CEO of a big company taking two hours out of his day to try to divert rain-water with carefully-placed twigs? Or burning ants with a magnifying glass? I can\’t, but I\’ll tell you this: If I ever become a CEO I promise to put aside time to magnify ants to death. That\’s what life is about; that\’s the good stuff.
That\’s why I\’ll probably never be the CEO of anything.
After the first one, every summer gets shorter and shorter. And you start having to abandon the things you used to have time for. First to go are the unfocused, drool-inducing daydreams. Watching concrete – easily an hour\’s worth of fun just a year earlier – is soon relegated to the great, growing heap of activities we call \”a waste of time\”. Before long it\’s joined by forgetting to get off the toilet, mixing toothpaste with shampoo and hiding from people who aren\’t looking for you.
By the time you reach college, summers are just empty places in the calendar to be filled with internships. Some people call this growing up. They say it\’s a necessary component of becoming a successful person, raising a family and contributing to society.
To those people I say: \”Twig dam? Internship? Twig dam? Internship? Eh? Ehhh?\”
I think it\’s pretty clear which one makes the larger contribution to society.