Childhood's late summers

I read an essay by Rick Bragg in this month's "Southern Living" about his Augusts as a child - how they seemed to last forever, and how he spent time in a giant mudhole, watching tadpoles and catching snakes and trying to ride a plywood "boat" across it.

And yes, I remember how long August seemed when I was a kid. School usually started up around Labor Day, which seems fitting and right to me. The mid-August dates used now seem far too early - August should still be summertime (You kids! Get off my lawn!).

Bragg actually argues one of the things "wrong" with kids today is that they don't tend to spend time poking mud with sticks or contemplating tadpoles. There may be something to that - I grew up somewhat as he did; my mom would turn my brother and me out of the house in the morning, telling us to come back at noon for lunch, and then, unless it was an unusually hot day or there were plans (like going to the library), we'd go back out in the afternoon until dinner time.

What did we do? Stuff. I climbed trees and made "houses" for some of my toy animals out of moss and twigs. I played in the mud and got very muddy. If a friend was around, we'd sometimes go do stuff somewhere else. I remember lots of time with my friend Elizabeth, where we'd go to a creek down the street and try to catch frogs (We never caught any; they were too fast for us). Or we'd go "exploring," which mainly meant walking around the still-undeveloped areas and looking at stuff. (It was a more innocent time, then. No one ever hassled us for it, no cop ever told us we were trespassing. Of course, as I said, we were good kids and pretty much all we ever did was look around and maybe climb a tree or two...)

Sometimes we played games; we'd play HORSE (one of the neighbor families had a basketball hoop) or hot potato or Smear the (politically incorrect word....that football game). Or we'd have giant, neighborhood-spanning games of hide and seek or Kick the Can, which really were my favorite. (I wonder what it says that I enjoyed most the games that required stealth, sneakiness, and the ability to stay hidden?)

School was coming up, and we knew it, but we didn't care. It seemed less ominous, somehow, than upcoming things seem ominous as an adult. There was still time. We could forget about it until it was time to go back-to-school shopping.

Summers did seem longer when I was a kid. I suppose some of that is because time just does seem longer when you're a kid; you've experienced less of it. But maybe also having fewer responsibilities made the days seem longer - now, the summers seem to fly by, with my teaching and research and also the quotidian tasks like laundry....