Sick In the Summer

Is there anything worse than being sick? Yes, there is - being sick in the summer. We’re all kind of used to getting sick in the dead of winter, but being sick at the height of summer is just wrong. Summer is supposed to be long, lazy days of friends, fun, and games. It’s supposed to be a time to relax and chill out, not have the chills. So when my son recently was sick for a few days, I really felt for him.

Luckily for him, my wife and I weren’t like my Mom and didn’t make him stay inside for a couple of extra days just to make sure he was truly better. Back when I was growing up, Mom always made us stay in and do next-to-nothing for an extra day after being sick. I don’t really know if it was make sure we were no longer sick or if it was just a deterrent to faking sickness so we could miss a day of school (of course, I never did that!). Either way, I didn’t want to have to stay in the house any longer than I had to, especially in the summer.

Who would want to miss a couple of days of wiffle ball, playing catch, riding bikes, and chasing the ice cream man for a freebie? Certainly not me or any of my old friends. Even on those sauna-like August days when we just sat under a tree and read our comic books or Mad magazine while listening to our AM transistor radios, it was so much better than being cooped up in the house. As you can probably guess, growing up in a family of nine, we had no air conditioners in the house. That is, unless you consider opening up the windows and turning on the big blue fan in the living room air conditioning. I really didn’t care for staying inside.

I remember one summer when I was about 10 years old, I had a headache and was really hot, so I told my Mom. She took my temperature and it turned out that I had a fever. Mom gave me some aspirin (St. Joseph’s aspirin for children, chewable and supposedly orange flavored - blah) and made me go lie on my bed and read so that I would get better quicker. I wasn’t supposed to do anything outside of that bed in my room. While I laid there staring up at the ceiling, contemplating how to get out of the mess I got myself into, I could hear the kids in the neighborhood outside, running around, and doing what I wanted to be doing. I don’t know which made me feel worse, having a fever or hearing my friends having a great time outside.

At some point I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later feeling much better, so I went and told Mom that I was ready to go outside. She politely told me that I still needed to rest, and that I needed to stay in the house. There was no argument, no trying to convince her I was okay, and no chance I was getting out of the house. Maybe, she said, I could go out the next day if kept getting better. Miracle of miracles, I was better the next day. There was absolutely no way I was going to tell her I didn’t feel anything but wonderful. I was going out and I wasn’t going to miss another precious day of vacation. Ah, but Mom had other ideas and I had to stay in another day, “just to make sure.” If I ever got sick in the summer again, I don’t remember telling Mom, because that meant multiple lost days of being outside with friends.

So my son got over whatever he had after a few days and went back to his normal life; work, friends, being out of the house, and enjoying the summer. The amazing part was that this all happened without being forced to stay in the house, up in his room, for one extra day. I wish I could have had that when I was a kid, whether I got sick in the winter, spring, summer, or fall. But like I said, there’s nothing worse than being sick in the summer.

Back From Vacation

I was on vacation last week with some of my wife’s family and they have younger children in the 6 – 9 years old range. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with kids that age, as my kids are now 17 and 20. It didn’t take me long to realize there are some major differences between my kids and the others.

The first difference was being woken up by kids at 6:00 in the morning. At that early hour, they are up and ready to go. You’re still sleeping? Not for long! They tried to stay quiet, but after about ten minutes of progressively louder whispering they started talking in their regular, middle-of-the-day voices. They obviously didn’t get the memo that it is alright to sleep past the normal time they get up for school. I usually get up at 6:00 AM for work, but I’d be very content to sleep past that time for a week or two. So I lose a few hours of the day by sleeping in, but who cares? I mean, it’s VACATION! My son could sleep until 10:00 or 11:00 (maybe even noon) and not feel bad about it. Of course, he’s not going to bed at 8:00 – 9:00 PM either, so I guess there is a tradeoff there.

The next difference is that younger kids go in and out of the house about a thousand times a day. And they slam the door every time! Not long after eating breakfast they are out to ride their bikes (slam!). After a few minutes one of them needs a drink of water, so he or she comes back in (slam!). Guzzle down that water and it’s time to get back outside like there’s a 30-second time limit on the break (slam!). Then someone realizes that someone else just went in for water, so they come in to get a drink, too (slam!). Repeat this process for every kid (slam!) multiple times (slam, slam, slam!) and…well, you get the picture. My kids either stay in the house, or when they go out there’s a quiet click as the door closes and we don’t see them or hear them for two or three hours. When they come back they quietly close the door. Ah, that’s nice.

The last difference is that younger kids get bored during the day. What? Bored? Did I mention that it’s VACATION? I guess that having fun for hours at a time gets old pretty quick for younger kids. You can only ride your bike, play games, watch movies, go to the beach and goof around for so long, and then it gets monotonous. Throw in breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between, and it seems like a pretty good day to me. I have a remedy for the boredom: sleep later and there won’t be as many hours to fill! That would take care of a couple of issues at the same time. We’d all be able to sleep later and the kids wouldn’t be so bored.

Now I don’t want it to sound like it was all bad or negative, because it wasn’t. It was actually a really great week. I had fun with the kids at the beach and I love to listen to them as they tell me about things from their perspective.  I got to spend some time with both my own kids, which doesn’t happen as much as I’d like these days. I got to spend some time with my in-laws, both of whom are kind, generous and entertaining. Last, but not least important, my wife and I got to spend a lot of time together, without the usual stuff that gets in the way at home, like work and schedules. You can’t beat that.

The week flew by and it wasn’t long before I was back to the real world. It’s at times like those that I sometimes wish I was still a kid, where vacation is not just a week or two, but the whole summer, and where I’d have so much time in the day to do whatever I wanted that I’d get bored. I’d just have to remember to close the door quietly on my way out.

The Ice Cream Man

As we’re coming down to the end of the summer, something I realized I haven’t seen this year is ice cream trucks. We used to have multiple ice cream or frozen lemonade trucks roll though our neighborhood in the summer, but this year I haven’t seen one. I also haven’t seen them driving along the streets in my area. It would be really sad to think that ice cream trucks have gone the way of the dinosaur.

I understand that the selection of music they play as they try to entice you to buy a cold treat is pretty atrocious, and it’s even worse when they have an annoying bell ringing. It’s also annoying when they come to your neighborhood right before dinner, but I suppose they can’t hit every neighborhood just right. However, it’s just not summer without an ice cream truck riding around your streets, calling out to you, telling you that relief and refreshment are right here. Even if you don’t buy any, it’s just not the same.

It was a rare treat when we got anything from the ice cream man when I was a kid. In fairness to my parents, we often had something in the freezer – a couple of flavors of ice cream, Popsicles or Fudgesicles. We often had some ice cream cones, too. Despite all that, when most of your friends were getting something from the ice cream man, getting something from the freezer just wasn’t the same. So it was a grand time when Mom actually gave us the money to get something from the ice cream man, even if it was the cheapest item from the truck.

We had some ways around the no-ice-cream-from-the-ice-cream-man problem. One was having friends who always seemed to have money in their pocket. Not that they would get me an ice cream every day, but they got me one sometimes or they would share theirs with me. A friend willing to share his ice cream on a hot summer day was a good friend indeed. Another was finding some change, either on the street, or under the cushions of the couch, or left lying around on a countertop. Sure, you had to save it up until you had enough, but that made the purchase that much sweeter when you finally could afford a Cannonball. There’s nothing like a rock hard piece of gum after eating an ice cream.

One year, my younger brother, a couple of friends and I asked the ice cream man if we could have an ice cream or two…for free. Of course, he laughed at us, but he held out some hope. He told us if we followed him until the end of his route, he would give us a couple of crushed ice creams to share between us, because he couldn’t sell them anyway. Where was the end of his route? Was a crushed ice cream even eatable? We didn’t know and we didn’t care, we were going to follow him on our bikes and find out. 

Ah, but here’s something we didn’t count on. The ice cream man’s route was actually quite long for kids our age, and on top of that he made a lot of stops, so it took what seemed like hours to reach the end. Looking back, he probably thought that we’d abandon the quest because of a) the heat, b) the distance, c) the time, or d) all of the above. I remember that a couple people dropped out and there were only two of us left at the end, both of us hot, sweaty and tired. For our efforts, we each got a squashed, partially freezer burned – but very cold – Chocolate Eclair ice cream! I do believe that was the best one I ever had, better than the ones I actually paid for over the years. Maybe it was that we took the challenge and actually made it to the end, maybe it was the way the ice cream man laughed at us at first, most likely it was because it was the only way I was going to get something better than a Popsicle, but I savored that ice cream like it was the last one I would ever have.

The ice cream man let us do that a couple more times, but then word got out and there were a bunch of kids following him around. In addition to being a traffic hazard, no one was buying anything from him, so he had to shut down the operation. Once toward the end of the summer, he pulled over and gave us a couple of crushed ice creams to share, telling us not to tell anyone else. One last treat to remember the summer by and he was gone, just like the free ice creams. The next summer, we had a different guy doing the ice cream truck in our neighborhood and he wasn’t the same. There were no freebies for anybody from that guy.  

Hopefully, this is not another childhood ritual that is gone for good. I hope next summer the ice cream man comes through our neighborhood with his annoying music playing and his overpriced treats up for grabs to anybody who has enough spare change. I might just go out there and buy something from him, like a Cannonball or a nice Chocolate Eclair. Who knows, maybe he’ll even have some crushed ones he’d be willing to part with for next to nothing. I’d be willing to take the discount as long as I don’t have to follow him to the end of his route.