Permanently Scar Your Children This Summer!

In the greater scheme of things, 500 posts is completely insignificant. A summer is but a fleeting flash. Eleven days is but a droplet in the giant bucket of time. However, as you may know if you've ever been ...say... a prisoner of war, awaiting the results of a blood test or an elevator while carrying something heavy, or mayhaps entrenched in a trench somewhere, based on your perspective eleven days can feel like a really long time. Odds are that on these occasions (i.e. the trench) you have access to cigarettes. This would undoubtedly make the passage of time significantly more tolerable. And your life in general less disjointed.

My point, and I do have one (other than, yup you guessed it, the fact that I haven't had a smoke in eleven totally pleasant and not annoying at all days), is that without something to do to pass the time, summer days and all their sunshiny beautifulness can have a way of dragging on. And on. Thankfully, during a recent trip to Anapolis' Sandy Point State Park, I stumbled across the printed version of The Bay Weekly's Indispensable Guide To Summer On The Bay; 101 Ways To Have Fun! Thanks to this guide, I now have a plethora of ideas on how to help the summer of 2007 drag it's ass on by! Even though the guide is aimed at kids, it applies, cause well, you know... I still consider Shrinky Dinks as a viable way to spend a Saturday.

What?

Ok, so the ideas in this guide were likely intended to keep schoolchildren busy over the summer months. You know, avoid those Idol hands... or idle hands. Hmm, not sure which would be worse. Anyway, here's a sample of the 101 fun summer suggestions (each suggestion has an explanation associated with it, truncated below. There's also an inordinate amount of exclamation points so prepare yourself). These ideas include:

1. Good morning, Sun! Join western shore dwellers this summer and start the day before dawn, watching the sunrise over the Chesapeake.
2. Comb the beach for fossils. Chesapeake history makes Calvert beaches among the best in the world for fossil finding!
3. Pucker up! Make real lemonade or limeade (recipe included).
4. Live the simple life! Immerse yourself in nature and spend an entire day "doing nothing"! Sit on the dock of the Bay or find a beach or a bench overlooking a creek. Watch the tide roll away.
   
5. Pen a poem!
6. Highlight your high-tops! Decorate your canvas sneakers in your own style. Use paint, glitter, permanent markers, sequins, and fabric paint or sew a design with embroidery floss!
7. Persue pretzel production at the Amish market!
8. Rent a canoe and paddle the day away!
9. Stand an egg on it's end! You really can, with patience and several eggs, and not just on the spring equinox, despite the urban legend.
   
10. Pack a picnic!
11. Stock a summer time capsule!
    
12. Express yourself at the Chesapeake Children's museum!
13. Tie-dye your sheets! Everyone does T-shirts. why not tie-dye your socks, sheets, pillowcase, washcloth or napkin!
    
14. Grow your own herbs!
15. Sport a tattoo! Summer's rising thermometers allow for more shedding of clothing. We molt like crabs! Less clothes equals more skin exposure. More skin exposure brings out an instinctive drive for freedom. Could it be time to show off your creative side and fantasies through body art, specifically tattoos? Long gone are the days when you sported your sweethearts name tattooed across your forearm. The newest fad, spreading from Hollywood is white-ink tattoos. For the faint of heart, it's better to start out small. maybe a dragonfly or rose. Enduring some pain is part of the tattooing process. The first time around (!), choose a fleshier place of your body, like your thigh. Bony ankles and the small of the back are two of the more painful areas to tattoo.
    

Wtf?! ?

Ok, I admit they slipped the "draw on or tie-dye everything you own that your parents worked so hard to get for you" idea passed me. Also the "grow your own herbs" implications didn't trigger my inappropriateness radar ...but "sport a tattoo"!? What degenerate kind of movement is this?? Who encourages prepubescent cents to indelibly mark themselves? Why not suggest the kids take up gangbanging and chain smoking to while away the gap between equinoxes while you're at it?


Anyway, the "Sport a Tattoo" suggestion (#56) goes on to discuss local tattoo parlors and lists the phone numbers and addresses of several local favorites, in noticeably greater detail than that of their Oyster recipe (suggestion #77). They then wisely advise that you schedule your appointment as early as possible as the aforementioned tattoo parlors tend to fill up "with lines forming out the door at 3pm when they open". *Envisioning the line of strollers waiting outside the door*

As I recall, 3pm was right about the time when the ice cream truck would come around and we'd beg and harass mom in our whiniest of hopping emergency whines to give us change so we could chase down the truck. Most often, we were denied.

Apparently, summer is a very busy time for scarring children.




I'm going to see about getting some work done as I sit here and shake my head in condescending judgement. And maybe think about that time capsule. And definitely that ice cream.