Let the games begin or at least increase in frequency and duration. It’s summer. The kids are milling around the house like misplaced guests that don’t know when to go home and have somehow mistaken you as their summer entertainment director.

After nine months of hard time and schedule following in elementary school they are like parolee’s that aren’t sure what to do with their new found freedom. I tell them, “Go outside and play it’s nice out.” To which they respond (whine), “But what can I do outside, there’s nothing to do.” To which I respond, “I don’t care as long as it’s semi-legal and doesn’t permanently maim anyone.” This exchange takes place roughly 94 times an hour the first few days of parole.

Eventually they’ll give in to the realization that I am not their teacher, there are no playground monitors, no schedules, eat when your hungry, sleep when your tired, and shower when you haven’t been to the pool in over two weeks. Once this sinks in and the mental and physical restraints of the structured learning environment begin to fade they start enjoying their summer.

The kids have a long school year and I think they deserve as much free kid time as they can cram in over the course of the next three months. Run wild, have fun, be a kid, because someday you might grow up and, God forbid, get a job that treats summer just like any other time of year. I cringe at the very thought of such a predicament.

As a college instructor I’m on the same schedule as the kids. Unlike the kids though I have the foresight to plan for these beloved three months during the other nine so I am never at a lose for things to do. When I close my office door in May, forgive me my face hurts from smiling, I know I won’t have to open it again until September.

All those summer plans do steal some of the summerness away so I try and leave time for general doings of nothingness also. The summer that kids enjoy is in its most pure sense. They don’t have a clue what they’re doing from one minute to the next let alone next weekend so they are free to just be.

They wander in for popsicle on occasion or to fill a water balloon when the mood strikes them but mostly they just play. Play whatever, whenever, with whoever, all day long. At the end of the day when you ask them what they did all day they’ll say, “Nothing, just played.” And they don’t say it with any regret or boredom in their voice they say it with the satisfaction and weariness that can only come from a successful summer day of “just play.”

Not a bad gig if you can get it or keep it. A friend of mine that has one of those jobs that ignores summer once told me, “Josh when you get up in the morning you have nothing to do and when you go to bad at night you only have half of it done.” A good point is hard to argue.

Here’s wishing you all a great summer. I hope when someone asks you what you did all day you can respond with “Nothing, just played” a few times anyway.

Enjoy the time you have with the people you have because neither lasts forever.