Aaron's Summer
After the Year of the Lost Summer and over 200 days spent cooped-up at home in front of a computer there was no question in my mind that Aaron was ready to go to town and live la vida loca, 8-yr-old style, this summer. To me summer only means three things: vacation, vacation, vacation! Once the school year ended I started my bucket list of all Dad-and-Son summer things to do: baseball, swimming, ice cream (well, that one is mostly Dad, Aaron is not an ice cream eater) and FUN! Because, after all, in my book summer=fun.
But Aaron looked at it differently.
He wanted to go back to school full time for the summer. Yup, you read that correctly.
“What did you say?,” I asked, dumbfounded.
“School, Dad. I want to go to school.”
“But summer school? You only go there if you have to.” I didn’t tell him I knew this first hand, I can think of several summers spent in a drab classroom with the rest of the class clowns and misfits.
Aaron fixed on me with his you’re-wasting-my-time look.
”Well, you asked me what I wanted to do for summer, and I’m telling you, I want to go to summer school.”
I’ve never been one to take such a misguided understanding of summer lying down, so I immediately jumped in with an offer. Out of the blue I pulled a schedule that I felt would satisfy his need for drab classrooms and my need for him to have F.U.N. C’mon, you need to be able and go back in time and be able to say “Man, that was one crazy summer!”, right?
He heard me out and, kinda reluctantly, agreed. I’m sure he could see the benefits in this package. Some extra weekly Robux helped sweeten the deal.
We shook hands on it and the rest, as they say, is unfolding history.
Aaron’s summer looks like this:
½ day summer school, 5 days a week
2 days a week of tennis lessons
1 day a week of baseball instruction
2-3 days a week of swimming lessons
2 days a week of coding lessons- he wants to program his own games
1 day a week online Hungarian lessons with Hungarian teacher living in Hungary (so Aaron and his mother, who is Hungarian, can talk behind my back. If they’re smiling and looking in my direction while speaking Hungarian, I prefer to think they are saying nice things about me).
Two weeks into his Summer of Study and Fun and I’m thinking I may have tried so hard to win this hand I did not fully consider the details...
Since this was my Grand Scheme my job is to drive Aaron and his friends to school, pick them up (I’m Carpool Dad) and take them to lunch 3-4 times a week. Then I spend the rest of each day driving him to all the other activities I so insisted he signed up for.
I am exhausted. The Summer of Study and Fun and Heat Dome and Delta Variant (yes, let’s not forget all the other realities of living in 2021) has turned into a non-stop involuntary examination of the state of our freeways and the counting in seconds the actual time the traffic lights take to turn to green - we locals knowingly call them “Forever Lights”.
And yesterday Aaron casually told me want to start playing golf again.
“What did you say?,” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Golf, Dad. I want to go to play golf again.”
“But you said it’s a sport for old people!” I sweated at the thought of playing golf in this heat and being his caddie because, bottom line is, I’m the one who ends up carrying all the gear.
Suddenly I started daydreaming of next summer and a sleepaway camp by a lake, where kids stayed at cabins and learned archery, fishing and tree climbing and held sing-alongs around a bonfire as they ate s’mores.
Just as sudden the reality of him sleeping in a cabin away from home brought me back to reality.
“Ok, golf it is. I’ll call them to set up a tee-time.”
I realized that, as exhausted as I was, some things were just not gonna happen under my watch. If he ever mentions going to a sleepaway camp I’ll encourage a backyard sleepaway. We’ll do s’mores on the BBQ.