What We Miss Most About Childhood Summers
Posted by: Wendy Atterberry
Filed in:
news
9:30AM, Friday July 17th 2009
It’s the middle of July and the heat is ON, but sadly, as lovely as summers are, they just don’t have the same kind of magic they did when we were kids, do they? Remember how endless the weeks between mid-June to mid-August used to seem? These days they fly by in a flash and it’s Fall before we’ve even had a chance to collect a single firefly in a jar. After the jump, 10 things I miss most about my summers past.
- Wearing a bathing suit (under clothes or by itself) all day every day (and not giving a crap about my thighs!).
- Popsicles for lunch.
- Watching back-to-back episodes of “You Can’t Do That On Television” every afternoon.
- Jelly shoes.
- Back-to-school shopping.
- Riding bikes around the neighborhood until 9 at night (well, okay, I can still do that…if I weren’t so lazy).
- Going to Grandma’s for a homemade fried chicken dinner.
- Cruising the mall for cute boys all afternoon.
- Growing a few inches (up, not out).
- Road trips with Mom and Dad back when I thought it was FUN to spend 14 consecutive hours in the car with them.
What do you miss about your childhood summers?
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Leese
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 09:55 am: [report]
Not having to drag my butt to work when it’s 90 degrees and all my friends are at the beach.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:05 am: [report]
I wasn’t old enough to do it, but riding bikes behind the DDT truck. :(
angelspinning
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:13 am: [report]
Feeling like summer was a truly important and consequential change. Before - 3rd grade. After - 4th grade. How different could those be? Now it’s just a slightly warmer few months in the continuous blah of the rest of my life.
Queen Frostine
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:21 am: [report]
11. Dashing through the neighbors lawn sprinkler
12. Chasing ice cream trucks down the street with the loose change we frantically dug out of the couch (and stole from mom’s change jar)
13. No schedule. No deadlines. No bills. No cell phones. No internet. No worries.
joyy
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:23 am: [report]
fireflies. We don’t really have them out here, but I also don’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes. The only thing I *really* miss is just having summers off. I guess I’m just the odd fish out in preferring adult life to childhood/adolescence ...
AAA131
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:30 am: [report]
the smell of chlorine
bumbler
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:31 am: [report]
I spent one whole summer in my father’s hip waders in a local pond with my neighbor friend and sister trying to catch the elusive bullfrog who wouldn’t be caught. I miss when something little like a wily frog could be all encompassing fun for months.
retro chic
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:33 am: [report]
Running thru the sprinklers topless…
A walk-in freezer full of popsicles
Playing music all day with friends, mooning about boys
Going to the beach all the time
Riding my bike everywhere
Family road trips and vacations
Sleeping outside in tents with friends and neighbors
Sleepovers at Grandma and Grandpa’s
Block parties… waterfights between the dads
...too much to list
Childhood summers… Innocence on a stick.
amylou
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 10:43 am: [report]
climbing trees to read in them, playing cops and robbers in the woods all day, riding bikes everywhere, then playing flashlight tag til late. my mom would barely let us back into the house during the day and for that i’m so grateful.
GreenAura
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 11:15 am: [report]
- sandcastles
- campfire S’mores (okay, I still eat them when I camp, but when I was a kid, I could eat like 10 w/o feeling guilty)
- water balloon fights & Super Soakers
- Wet ‘N Wild
- waking up knowing that I didn’t have to go to school and that I could ride my bike all day
Cherubina
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 11:18 am: [report]
I’m with you on Nos. 1 through 6!
Also, spending warm, clear evenings on the back porch with candles lit all around, reading and rereading my favorite novels until it got too dark.
Going to Maine with my extended family and visiting the tide pools, finding starfish, little crabs, sea snails, and anemones.
jgd1208
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 11:28 am: [report]
*playing “Ghost in the Graveyard” with the neighborhood kids until it was too dark to see.
*hearing the baseball games on my parent’s radio when trying to sleep at night
*curtains blowing in the breeze at night
*catching lightning bugs and putting them in a jar for a night light
*waking up in time to watch the Price is Right
*not caring that watermelon juices dripped down your arms.
bellarose
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 12:45 pm: [report]
...My dark hair turning light from hours in the sun!
...Wearing a summer dress and sandles with popsicle stains and no worries!
...Sidewalk chalk drawings and hopscotch!
...Slip ‘n’ Slide!
...Sleepovers every night!
bellarose
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 12:47 pm: [report]
... and never knowing if it was Monday or Friday because everyday felt like the weekend!
bogart4017
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 12:49 pm: [report]
Those teen years falling in “love” with a different girl every summer.
Spending summers in South Carolina in a town so small the barber shops and beauty salons were closed Sunday AND Monday.
Cruising the back streets with my cousin and sisters boyfriend in 74 buick elektra 225 listening to Johnny Guitar Watson and the Commodores and drinking Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull.
Gut splitting Sunday dinners at the grandparents house.
I guess its true what they said in that movie—“You can’T stay 17 forever”
z3nger
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 01:33 pm: [report]
Everything just felt so much funner back then..world was bigger, and everything was exciting…i miss it.
*sam*
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 01:51 pm: [report]
* “exploring” the neighbor’s backyard with the boys
* racing our bikes through the puddle in the middle of the road after a fresh rain
* spending *SO* much time with my best friend that after two weeks of spending alternate nights at each others house, we would *finally* take a break and sleep in our own bed alone for two or three nights—then do it all again!
* “sneaking out” of my house to take long walks down my road—only to spend hours at the top of it sitting on the newspaper thing talking a/b boys
* feeling like you’ve ‘grown up’ b/c now you’re entering a new grade
* spending rainy days indoors playing super mario kart and beating a bunch of boys’ butts at it!!! :D
Ginger
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 02:02 pm: [report]
Building boats out of popsicle sticks and wine corks and sending my barbies down the stream, desperately hoping that they’d meet me at the end and tell me how exciting it was.
dandrean
wrote on July 17 2009 @ 03:03 pm: [report]
being bored out of my mind in the middle of july wishing school would start already.
and being upset that i couldn’t have one of those cool birthdays during the school year, where it wasn’t lame to invite the kid you never talked to in class over, even if it was just for the present.
tishfish44
wrote on July 18 2009 @ 11:47 am: [report]
Only stopping by the house once every 6-8 hours to grab something to eat or a couple dollars and then back off to adventures (at the pool, park, friends’ houses, you name it, the city was OURS from age 6 to 16!).
konstantine
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 12:41 pm: [report]
when swimming actually involved swimming- regardless of whether or not my hair got wet or how cold the water was! Cheeseburgers fresh off the grill. The joy of hearing the ice cream truck during dinner…
Perceptible
wrote on August 13 2009 @ 12:52 pm: [report]
~ Endless days without a single, frantic moment.
~ Falling asleep without even so much as a thought about what I had to do the next day.
~ Knocking on friends’ doors to see if anyone could “come out to play.”
~ Sleepovers at Grandma’s house with my cousins.
~ Daydreaming about what I wanted to be and where I wanted to go when I grow up. (Okay, maybe I still do this one.)
~ Climbing trees.
~ Riding my bike for hours.
~ The beach: EVERY DAY! (Grew up on Long Island)
~ Making it up as we went along.