The fleeting summer

Now that all of my kids have graduated, the end of the academic year doesn't mean as much to me as it used to (other than high school sports PA announcing opportunities drying up for a few months).

The only thing I really notice is that my drive to work gets faster in the summer.

I drive past a busy elementary school on weekday mornings. When school is in session, my commute usually coincides with drop-off time, and the line of cars backs up into the street I take to get to the office.

It's not that big a deal, especially because there's a friendly police officer there every morning directing traffic, and he allows those of us not dropping off kids to pull around the line and be on our merry way.

But that's not until we get relatively close to the school driveway. Until that point, I sit in stopped traffic for a few minutes, particularly if the school crossing guard is having a busy morning ferrying kids across the road (which he generally is, given that this school is in a residential neighborhood and features a lot of parents and kids walking to school).

Much like an 8-year-old in June looking forward to a long summer vacation, once school lets out, I get excited about 12 weeks of drop-off line-free driving in the mornings. It feels like I'm going to be zooming to and from work forever.

But before I know it, and way before it feels like it should be happening, the drop-off line is back. Early September rolls around and those same kids, all a little older and now a grade higher, are back out there clogging up the roads in pursuit of an education.

Again, not a burden at all, but it does remind me how fast summers go, especially when you live in a place like Northeast Ohio where cool (or freezing cold) weather is the rule eight months out of the year and sometimes longer.

We so look forward to summers here on America's North Coast (we're the only ones who call the southern shore of Lake Erie that) that once they arrive, we sometimes hang our entire emotional wellbeing on them.

"Please, please, please stay warm and dry. Just for a little while. Please. The snow will come soon enough. Whoever is in charge of the weather, I will pay them $1,000 just for the opportunity to wear flip-flops for a few weeks."

This helps to explain why so many people around here, especially boys in the 12 to 16 age range, start wearing shorts when it's still freezing outside. We're so desperate for warm weather that we'll pretend it's here once the weak, early-spring sun comes out, even if the air temperature tops out at 40 degrees.

All of this is to point out what you already know: (A) It's July 25th. Somehow. (B) It's still summer, but kids start going back to school in just a few weeks. (C) Nothing good ever seems to last.

Enjoy it while you can, gang.

The fundamental question when taking your vacation time: Long breaks or extended weekends?

I question the AI Blog Post Image Generator's choice of hat for this man sitting on the beach, but otherwise it's well done.

One of my favorite feelings in the world is getting near the end of the weekend and realizing, late on a Sunday afternoon, that I'm off work the next day and free to do whatever I like.

But its close cousin is the Friday afternoon "Hey, I'm on vacation all next week and won't be back in the office for the next 10 days!"

When it comes time to plan out my vacation for the year, I find both of these dynamics playing out in my head.

Do I take a few full weeks off and sprinkle in a few personal days here and there as needed?

Or do I take a series of four-day weekends throughout the course of the year?

The answer for me is usually "all of the above."

I'll take a week or more off when we're going somewhere, as we're doing right now for our trip to Paris. But I also like pinpointing a Friday and a Monday per month (preferably bracketing the same weekend) and taking those days off as well for no particular reason.

It's a good blend of planned/purposeful/destination-oriented breaks mixed with "hey, why not?" mini-vacations.

Your philosophy may differ.

Either way, as I've mentioned before, take those vacation days!

When I was growing up, this was about the time we would get out of school

It was only when I became a parent that I realized how amazingly short our kids' summer break from school really was.

At least in our district (though I think this is common), they don't even have 12 full weeks off before they're right back in the classroom.

Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. Indeed, during my time working with The Cleveland Foundation, I came to see some advantages to having year-round school with extended breaks between quarters/semesters.

It's just that, when I was a kid, summer vacation seemed to go on forever. It was great. We would get out in mid-June and not be back until after Labor Day.

I don't remember a single summer ever flying by or seeming too short, which may suggest that my friends and I did it right and made the most of our vacation time.

Later on as a parent, however, those 11 1/2 weeks would fly by in an instant. That's probably a function of time in general passing more quickly once you become an adult, but I could never reconcile the fleeting nature of my kids' summer vacations with the seemingly longer breaks I had as a kid.

In any event, as today's headline suggests, this is about the time of year in the 1970s and 80s when we would have our last day of school. That seems quaint now because, as far as I know, no local school district has been in session for at least a week, and many for longer than that. The kids almost universally get out in mid/late May or early June these days.

I don't know that that's any better or worse than the way we did it in my youth, it's just different.

Even with my kids grown, I still can't get used to it.

Remember when kids used to have their summers free?

(NOTE: This is our once-a-month "Blog Rerun" post. This one originally ran on June 12, 2013, and it still resonates with me. Let kids be kids. Let summer be summer. That's what I say.)

I will try my best not to turn this into a "hey, things were a lot better when I was younger" post. Because I'm not someone who generally thinks that way.

But I will say this about the experience of being a kid now vs. the days when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s:

Back when I was a lad, summer vacation meant...well, it meant "summer vacation." It meant you had half of June and all of July and August to yourself. To do with as you pleased.

Apart from family vacations and the occasional little league baseball game (which occurred, what, twice a week maybe?), you were on your own.

And it was glorious.

Of course, being a kid, you absolutely took for granted the whole concept of waking up on a warm summer morning and having nothing but a blank slate of a day ahead of you.

Only when the first day of school rolled around did you really appreciate what you had just lost.

And that first day of school, by the way, was always after Labor Day. Always. Now, I'm fairly certain my kids start a new school year about 20 minutes after the previous one ends.

Anyway, we had gigantic chunks of unstructured time in the summer months, and we used them to engage in what was, for me, a lot of fun stuff.

We played sports and games outside. We played our Atari 2600 systems inside.

We rode our bikes. We went to the city pool.

We set up failed lemonade stands. We set off firecrackers that one of us had somehow (illegally) gotten our hands on.

We watched TV. We played some more Atari.

You probably have a similar list from your own childhood.

The point is, we did a lot of things without interference from (or really the need for) adults. And both the kids and the grown-ups were just fine with this system.

Then two things happened that started the whole thing spinning out of control.

One was the specialization of sports. And by that I mean the drive to make kids better at their chosen sport through an influx of summer camps, clinics, practices, conditioning sessions, etc.

Doesn't matter what your sport is: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse. Whatever. If you're a kid and you play it, there are programs designed to expose you to that sport year-round.

With that also came the creeping influence of club sports, travel programs, Junior Olympic teams, and so forth. And those have become all-consuming for families across the nation.

Not that I think there's anything intrinsically wrong with these things, mind you. If you choose to participate in them, and if it makes your child happy, by all means, go for it.

But the unintended side effect of these leagues and programs is that kids who just play sports for fun, who will never receive college athletic scholarships, suddenly find themselves pressured to join. You either participate in the travel program in the summer or else you don't play when the actual sports season rolls around in fall or spring.

Well, that's OK, you might say. Kids like that can just join a no-pressure rec league.

Which would be fine, except cities and leagues everywhere have taken their limited resources and directed them toward the travel and premier-level programs, leaving rec programs to rot on the vine with inferior equipment and few trained coaches.

That is, if the rec-level sport still exists at all. Many have just disappeared altogether.

The result is an all-or-nothing, travel-league-or-bust approach that alienates the average kid. So, rather than be left out, youngsters will often submit to the pressure of travel sports, and suddenly their calendars (summer and otherwise) fill up with practices, games and skill sessions that leave little time for any real relaxation or creative play.

The other thing that precipitated this trend is that overworked parents have started implementing structure in the lives of kids who didn't necessary need more of it.

Parents have always felt some degree of guilt over the amount of time they spend (or don't spend) with their children. But nowadays, with magazine articles, TV psychiatrists and authors constantly reminding them just how slack they are in the parenting department, moms and dads try to compensate by exposing Junior to a wealth of new experiences through lessons, classes, and seminars of every kind.

Every. Kind.

Many kids today need an admin assistant just to keep track of their schedules. I had two things on my summer schedule when I was growing up:

8 a.m. - Get out of bed. Go find friends and commence day's activities.

9 p.m. - Come in when I was called and go to bed. Repeat cycle the next day.

And I guess I turned out OK. For what that's worth.

You don't hear many kids complaining about this turn of events, and I'm guessing that's because they don't know any different. They've never had unstructured summers, so they don't know what they're missing.

I'll tell you what they're missing.

A lot.

But maybe that's just the product of the undisciplined mind of a guy who spent his childhood summers playing in his friend's backyards. What do I know?

Remember when kids used to have their summers free?

I will try my best not to turn this into a "hey, things were a lot better when I was younger" post. Because I'm not someone who generally thinks that way.

But I will say this about the experience of being a kid now vs. the days when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s:

Back when I was a lad, summer vacation meant...well, it meant "summer vacation." It meant you had half of June and all of July and August to yourself. To do with as you pleased.

Apart from family vacations and the occasional little league baseball game (which occurred, what, twice a week maybe?), you were on your own.

And it was glorious.

Of course, being a kid, you absolutely took for granted the whole concept of waking up on a warm summer morning and having nothing but a blank slate of a day ahead of you.

Only when the first day of school rolled around did you really appreciate what you had just lost.

And that first day of school, by the way, was always after Labor Day. Always. Now, I'm fairly certain my kids start a new school year about 20 minutes after the previous one ends.

Anyway, we had gigantic chunks of unstructured time in the summer months, and we used them to engage in what was, for me, a lot of fun stuff.

We played sports and games outside. We played our Atari 2600 systems inside.

We rode our bikes. We went to the city pool.

We set up failed lemonade stands. We set off firecrackers that one of us had somehow (illegally) gotten our hands on.

We watched TV. We played some more Atari.

You probably have a similar list from your own childhood.

The point is, we did a lot of things without interference from (or really the need for) adults. And both the kids and the grown-ups were just fine with this system.

Then two things happened that started the whole thing spinning out of control.

One was the specialization of sports. And by that I mean the drive to make kids better at their chosen sport through an influx of summer camps, clinics, practices, conditioning sessions, etc.

Doesn't matter what your sport is: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse. Whatever. If you're a kid and you play it, there are programs designed solely to expose you to that sport year-round.

With that also came the creeping influence of club sports, travel programs, Junior Olympic teams, and so forth. And those have become all-consuming for families across the nation.

Not that I think there's anything intrinsically wrong with these things, mind you. If you choose to participate in them, and if it makes your child happy, by all means, go for it.

But the unintended side effect of these leagues and programs is that kids who just play sports for fun, who will never receive college athletic scholarships, suddenly find themselves pressured to join. You either participate in the travel program in the summer or else you don't play when the actual sports season rolls around in fall or spring.

Well, that's OK, you might say. Kids like that can just join a no-pressure rec league.

Which would be fine, except cities and leagues everywhere have taken their limited resources and directed them toward the travel and premier-level programs, leaving rec programs to rot on the vine with inferior equipment and few trained coaches.

That is, if the rec-level sport still exists at all. Many have just disappeared altogether.

The result is an all-or-nothing, travel-league-or-bust approach that alienates the average kid. So, rather than be left out, youngsters will often submit to the pressure of travel sports, and suddenly their calendars (summer and otherwise) fill up with practices, games and skill sessions that leave little time for any real relaxation.

The other thing that precipitated this trend is that overworked parents have started implementing structure in the lives of kids who didn't necessary need more of it.

Parents have always felt some degree of guilt over the amount of time they spend (or don't spend) with their children. But nowadays, with magazine articles, TV psychiatrists and authors constantly reminding them just how slack they are in the parenting department, moms and dads try to compensate by exposing Junior to a wealth of new experiences through lessons, classes, and seminars of every kind.

Every. Kind.

Many kids today need an admin assistant just to keep track of their schedules. I had two things on my summer schedule when I was growing up:

8 a.m. - Get out of bed. Go find friends and commence day's activities.

9 p.m. - Come in when I was called and go to bed. Repeat cycle the next day.

And I guess I turned out OK. For what that's worth.

You don't hear many kids complaining about this turn of events, and I'm guessing that's because they don't know any different. They've never had unstructured summers, so they don't know what they're missing.

I'll tell you what they're missing.

A lot.

But maybe that's just the product of the undisciplined mind of a guy who spent his childhood summers playing in his friend's backyards. What do I know?