On Summer Time and the Living’s Easy

In which we fondly look back before excitedly looking forward.

Remember growing up how much you looked forward to summer break?  That agonizing wait for school to end and freedom to begin?  It was fantastic.  Some of favorite summer memories growing up include the following.  Sitting on the front porch of my house on Kent Avenue watching as patchy, windswept clouds blew past the sun.  I can distinctly remember looking down the street as shadows moved down the road like cars.  I’m not sure what about it was about that moment that made it lodge so deeply in my mind but it is there none the less.

I also remember skipping the last part of the last period of the last day of seventh grade.  All day my friends and I talked about cutting class and starting summer break early but we never had the stones to go through with it, until eighth hour rolled around.  We probably didn’t skip out much more than 30 minutes before the bell rang but man that extra half hour of summer was awesome.

One of my most pervasive memories of pre-college life was going to my friend Ryan’s house and playing laser tag.  At some point in the mid-90’s Ryan and his dad were at a store and saw a pile of laser tag guns on super clearance, specifically they saw these:
This is the Electronic Survivor Shot, the best home-based laser tag gun that you could buy.  What made it the best?  See that ugly thing at the top of the picture, that’s the sensor.  While most laser tag sensors were on the gun or on the player’s chest this was strapped to your head.  It has a 360^o receptor so you can get hit from any direction and when you get hit a motor rattled a button on your temple, which, when you are running around in the dark can freak the crap out of you.  What made this experience so amazing was the fact that Ryan lived on a hill overlooking an elementary school.  So we would play over a huge area that had lots of fencing, dark corners and narrow alleys.  I can still remember what it was like to walk along the tree line in the pitch black wondering if there was someone hiding just out of sight.  Or finding the perfect spot and being able to light someone up without them even knowing where you were¹.

Summer doesn’t really have the same feel that it used to.  There seems like there is always something that needs to be done, some project to work on, or money that needs to be earned².  But there are still things about the summer that I am very much looking forward to.  Now you may be asking your self, “Isn’t it still April? Didn’t spring start like, a month ago? Isn’t the summer solstice, the official start of summer, still held in late June?”

The answer to all of these questions is undoubtedly yes.

However, for two organizations summer starts in week.  What are these mystical events that have sped the seasonal calendar up by over a month?  College and Hollywood.  Next week is finals week here in Bloomington, Indiana, with the spring semester officially coming to an end the summer session will start on Tuesday morning.  Which brings me to the first thing that I am looking forward to this summer³. The summer exodus.

I love living in Bloomington, it’s why I came back to IU for grad school and it’s why I am hoping and praying for a counseling job in the area.  But as much as I enjoy living here during the year summers in Bloomington are simply the best.  It’s when we get to say goodbye dude bros, goodbye Ugg girls⁴, goodbye wide-eyed freshmen, goodbye jaywalkers, goodbye people stopping on third street to pick up friends, goodbye thirty minute trips across town.  We won’t miss you.

Hollywood is the other perpetrator of summer’s early arrival, because Hollywood loves money, and the summer is when they make it.  Next Friday Iron Man 2 opens up across the country officially kicking off the summer blockbuster season.  Every year Hollywood rolls out a swath of big-budget, big-effect movies one right after another in an attempt to separate you from your hard earned dollars.  Most of the movies will be mediocre, some will be terrible and some will be great.  A bold prediction on my part I know, but that’s how it goes.  With so many movies coming out it can be difficult to keep on top of them all.  But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.  Here is a super-trailer for you covering most of the big summer movies.

So what else am I looking forward to this summer?  A lot of things really.  I’m excited that I will get to hang out with my family a number of times throughout the summer.  I get to go to Young Life camp again, but this time as an adult guest which will be super rad.  I’m looking forward to playing disc golf⁵ and riding bikes around town.  I’m glad I get to be a part of the Rose’s garden from the ground up, literally.  I’ll be honest I’m kind of excited to hit the one year mark with this blog because I didn’t think it would last.  And I’m really excited to find out what’s next for me.  But really I’m just looking forward to spending some quality summer time here in Bloomington.

So let me be the first to welcome you to the summer, here’s hoping it’s an outrageously wondrous one.
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¹  My best spot was 30 feet up in a pine tree I sniped so many suckers.
²  Which is a part of why I am looking forward to working in a school full-time, summers off.
³  False alarm.  I made this footnote mark, but now I can’t remember why.  Apologies.
⁴  How is that look still in fashion, it boggles my mind.
⁵  Can’t wait to check out this homebrew course my friends came up with on campus. Check it out.