By the time you read this, we’ll all be lamenting the quick arrival of August. But before you pull out your wool sweaters, let me take you back to July.
Somewhere around July 10th as I made my way around a low-priced retail store, I was confronted by an oversized cardboard display. At first, I thought maybe I had fallen into a fugue-like state where I was dreaming about the store and if I just blinked twice I’d be back in bed. But no, blinking didn’t clear my vision.
There before me stood a large square box covered in images of crayons playfully dancing across a field of white and inside the box were hundreds of cartons of Crayola crayons. Crayons!!! This display was the precursor of what I knew would be on sale the following week – three-ring binders and lined paper. School supplies on parade because summer was over.
Okay, not literally, but certainly from the viewpoint of those who make a living marketing must-have items to a species presently covered in sunscreen. While we were just beginning to enjoy some sun and firing up grills, retailers were preparing to remind you that seasonal shifts are around the corner so hurry and stock up on crayons before they are all gone! Give me a break.
Here we go…
When I was a kid, summer lasted from the moment school closed until the moment it reopened. Oh sure, Ma received her advance copy of Sears and Roebuck’s winter catalog chockablock full of winter clothing. But no one was looking at it, including Ma.
We were too busy waiting for the ice cream man, eating watermelon, which by the way, was only available for a few weeks in the summer, and of course, riding bikes, playing jump rope, and going to the beach.
Ma was enjoying the slight freedom from domestic industry that summer allotted a wife and mother in the 1950s. Cold suppers were acceptable. Ma was freed from ironing little cotton dresses or preparing brown bag lunches.
At lunchtime in the summer, one of us might squawk, “Ma, I need a sandwich.” Her reply from the screened porch where she’d most likely be smoking a Winston and gossiping with a neighbor was, “Get it yourself!” No need to rush to the aid of an eight-year-old kid who had nothing to do all day but read comic books and blow bubbles into the wind.
We didn’t think about going back to school until the inevitable trip to the barbershop for a trim, or Ma’s call to, “Come here, let me check your fingernails,” signaled the jig was up. Something must be happening or else why would she care what we looked like, it was summer for crying out loud.
As I stood there before that display of crayons, my ire rose as only it can when control over one’s destiny is being handled by invisible forces. How dare they take my summer away by forcing me to accept that in a few short weeks schools would re-open? Damn them to hell!
Now that I’m far from those carefree days of childhood where the biggest problems I had to deal with were scabbed-over knees and a missing skate key, I’m right back to embracing summer like a child.
I study the tide charts and weather forecast then confer with my girlfriend to make sure she can come out and play. Then it’s off to the beach where we merrily bob around until our fingers are prunes and no longer have the sense of touch. “Oh, we better go in, I can’t feel my fingers any longer,” one of us will eventually remark. Sadly, we trudge out of the water morphing from two little girls at play back to two senior citizens who are well aware that seasons slip away much too fast.
But it still angers me that shareholder value equates to pushing the seasons along at an increasing pace. Before you know it retailers will be trying to sell us school supplies for the coming year before school even closes for summer.
Of course, I could just ignore the marketing strategies designed to pull dollars from consumer pockets into profit margins. Quarterly revenues must rule and reaching prescribed goals is a narrative all too familiar to anyone who has been part of a corporate structure. “Our shareholders expect value,” is a favorite CEO mantra. How about, “VALUE THIS!” I quit. Oh wait I’m retired. Ignore that last bit of ranting.
Candidly speaking, I just want to play with the same carefree abandon I once enjoyed. After all, how many seasons does one get is a difficult question with no answer. That’s why baby boomers have bucket lists after all.
So instead, I reject all the advertising hoopla. I’ll enjoy the tides and the sun, the fresh corn and the watermelons, ice cream cones beside the harbor, and long walks with the dog past 8:30 pm because it isn’t dark yet so I don’t have to go inside.
In a memory I hear myself saying, “Ma, I want to stay outside. Faith is still outside. The street light isn’t on yet, Maaaa!”
She is standing at the screen door saying, “Okay, but stay near the house.” My playmate and I sit on the edge of the sidewalk watching our sparklers slowly sizzle, safe in the knowledge that there is always tomorrow and summer is not over yet. Oh, the innocence of youth.
By Marilou Newell