And summer begins

 The end of the school year is very different for me now than it was when I was a kid. 

When I was a kid - well, you counted down the days. Even kids like me who LIKED school and learning stuff. The last few days were 'easier' - some years there was a fun field trip, or a picnic, or a field day (I didn't like field days so much as I wasn't good at that kind of sports, and they were mostly the track-and-field type of things; I would have enjoyed something like a kickball tournament).

And then there was locker-clean-out day, and turn-back-in-the-textbooks, and then the last day was almost always a half-day. And often the school bus took the route in reverse, so you saw parts of the route you never saw. 

And then getting off the bus, and the summer - the whole summer, close to three months - stretched ahead of you. Nothing you HAD to do (well, unless you had piano lessons or signed up for something like soccer). You could do largely what you wanted - which, for me, included running around with my friends in the neighborhood and climbing trees, or trying to catch frogs, or if we could assemble enough kids, kickball or something like flag football, or hide-and-seek. Or just walking around in the various vacant lots/parks around the neighborhood and looking at stuff.  

And of course being able to play with your toys for longer than on schooldays, or undertaking bigger projects like building things...

Oh, eventually it got boring, and you wanted something different to do. Or the nearby friends went on vacation/to sports camp/whatever and you couldn't find someone to play with. But those first few days were pretty sweet.