Sense and Sensibility

Is Summer Boredom Worse in the Techno Age?

About this time of year, I start getting the summer question: “What are you going to do with your son this summer?”

The question always makes me flinch. Firstly, it makes P.J. sound like a sofa —- “Oh, I thought I’d put him in the basement with the Christmas ornaments.”

Secondly, it reveals a profound maternal deficit on my part. The truth is, I haven’t thought about my son’s summer activities. I figured P.J. would spend the summer pretty much as I had —- shooting lay-ups, catching tadpoles and watching reruns of “The Big Valley.”

But that’s not the way kids spend their summers these days. Today, kids’ summer activities are routinized, categorized and plotted on an Excel spread sheet. Nobody spends their summer lying around on the neighbor’s hill, as I did, searching for animal shapes among the clouds. Today, there’s sport camp, science camp, drama camp, art camp, Scout camp and, my favorite, imagination camp.

Brochures for all these camps clot my mailbox like pollen on the windowsill, making me feel derelict and impoverished. These camps are expensive, but, as their sales department tell you, they’re imperative. The average kid loses 2.6 months of educational advancement during the summer, making you feel as though you should sue the school department for ever considering the idea of summer vacation. If it’s not bad enough that popular culture is trying to turn your child into a cabbage whose only aptitude is shopping, the unstimulating repose of the summer is actually eroding your child’s brain cells. If you don’t sign him up for the camp where kids play hopscotch on the periodic table, you might as well buy him the Taco Bell smock now.

It’s enough to make you wonder how on earth you got through your own summer without a Blackberry.

The summer I was 11, I drafted a play called “The Giant’s Chair,” and cast every neighborhood kid in different roles. We performed it late one August afternoon, with me, standing on a tree stump, acting as narrator. I can recall nothing of the plot but we charged 25 cents to sit on the lawn and watch the thing, and when it was all over we had enough for several bags of Wise potato chips and a six-pack of Fanta grape soda.

The next year, I decided to hold a block party. True, I was only 12, but I had seen the neighbors on Paul Revere Road do it and it looked like a cinch. I rode my Columbia bike down to the police station and filled out a permit. I went around the neighborhood with a clip board and asked who would bring what. I sat down with my neighbor, Jeannie Collins, and we figured out a series of games for the little kids. I believe most of the neighborhood came just to see if a sixth-grader could pull off something like that.  

After that, junior high was a snap.

I read that the recession is forcing families to cut back on vacations and summer camps. On the front page of the New York Times I read recently that a couple is having to trim expenses but hasn’t had the nerve to cut the $545 monthly bill for dance lessons.

All over the news I see stories about “The New Frugality,” and tips on how to get by in tough times.

A friend of mine, who lived through the Depression, told me recently about how his family used to make dinner for seven out of a can of soup and loaf of bread.

“Drop an egg in the soup and you’ve got your protein,” the guy said.

Meanwhile, my brother, planning my niece’s sixth birthday, tells me he’s not sure he can afford the Moon Walk this year, but he’s pretty sure he can still spring for a clown.

The other day my son came home from “field day” at school, a sort of free-for-all of obstacle courses and relay races. He spent two hours in the den with 24 stuffed animals and a dozen pencils, arranging some sort of elaborate stuffed-animal Olympics whose regulations eluded me. He kept track of the winners on a piece of paper, meticulously calculating points and scores for each team. “Mommy,” he said. “Plats’ team is up by 35 points!”

I suppose I’ll send P.J. to a few day day camps this summer; a couple of weeks won’t hurt him. I’m sure he’ll make great friends and terrific memories. One day, perhaps he’ll tell his children about them. Or perhaps he’ll still remember, as I do, the summer he tried to top his mother’s personal record for successive pogo stick jumps [Dash] 1,110.

That’s a number, like the surprisingly imaginative fertility of summer boredom, that stays with a person.

Contact: Tracey@Traceyosh.com.

Written by Tracey O’Shaughnessy, c. 2009 Republican-American