Summer

S is For Summer

I'll skip the part about the American Government and Calculus tests, because they don't count, and the day didn't start until lunch.

Today was the first warm summery day, and we celebrated by lying on the field outside the school for three hours. All of my classes were over and Kate and Jon and Tom skipped theirs and we laid in a heap and talked about goofy things and then Jon had to go to sixth period. So he left and we went to AM/PM to get popsicles. They didn't have rocket pops, so we tried the pig-feet grocery (they sell them floating in big jars!) down the street, and not only did they have rocket pops, they had a kind called "Super Lime" that was green and white and is now my new definition of summer.

It was that perfect kind of day where your popsicle melts as fast as you eat it, so it's all wonderful and slushy. We got back to school and sat on the steps and talked about our summer plans and tried to figure out if our spring breaks were going to coincide next year.

Then school ended and I found Jess and we rode the bus home. I laid in bed and read for a while, then started to fall asleep for a while, feeling perfectly warm and drowsy, then Jess and I went to Dick's (our corner grocery store) to get popsicles. We had changed into shorts and sandals (for the first time this year! I love the first shorts day!), and after we got the popsicles (rocket pops this time), we moseyed up the street to Volunteer Park, stopping at Stevens school to play on the playground. But there were a bunch of little kids there that we didn't want to disturb and a dog rubbed its nose on Jess' leg, so we left. Our popsicles were nearly gone by then, so we stopped at the Volunteer Park Grocery, and found two more "Super Lime" popsicles! For some reason, there was no garbage can outside the store, so we had to carry the wrappers and the old sticks in our pockets.

At the park, we finished our Super Limes on the rim of the wading pool (no water in it yet) in a patch of sun. A bunch of kids were running around pretending to be airplanes in it, and this one little girl ran up to a group of boys and said "I'm eating gum. I'm eating gum. I'm eating gum" over and over until she got tired of it, and went flying off. You have to sort of miss the, um, carefree days of youth, huh?

I better not forget to mention the three kids who wouldn't answer their father unless he called them Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. At first we were really confused, wondering why he'd named his little girl Simon.

Our bit of sun moved, so we got up and went to the big field, where we kicked off our shoes and worked on our dancing skills. We tried a waltz I learned, and a Viennese waltz Jess knows, but the best was the polka! If you don't know about polkas, they involve a lot of galloping and spinning. So we shouted "1,2,3,1,2,3," and sang bouncy songs, trying to see how many spins we could get before we tripped each other and fell in a heap. Not many. This guy who had been lying on his back reading propped himself up on his elbows to see what all the ruckus was about, watched until we fell over, and went back to his book. Then we went home and watched Bill Nye the Science Guy. 3 popsicles, 2 parks, 3 waltzes and being dizzy in the sun equals perfection to me.