The theme song to a popular Disney Channel show claims
“there’s a hundred and four days of summer vacation ‘til school comes along
just to end it.” Lyrics then describe the various ways that an adventurous pair
of boys spend their summer.
Oh, if only it were true.
We’re being sung a lie! There aren’t a hundred and four days
of summer vacation, and I don’t know what kind of calculation these people performed
to arrive at that number. Maybe they go to some sort of special
shortened-calendar school. If that’s the case, then good for them. I’m jealous.
So are my kids.
Or maybe they chose 104 for rhythmic reasons of song
writing. They wrote a catchy tune, so at least they have that going for them,
since their math skills are atrocious. Although their math skills probably
improve every time they deposit one of those fat royalty checks from Uncle
Walt.
But I’m still not letting them off the hook. Summer vacation
isn’t 104 days long. In fact, thanks to that wicked waste of a season we call
winter, and the accompanying cold/snow days, my kids will enjoy a summer
vacation five days shorter than last summer. There are seventy-five days of
summer vacation this year.
My kids and I have been counting down until the last day of
school and it’s been difficult to avoid stealing their excitement. Although I
graduated high school eighteen years ago, I still remember that euphoric
feeling when the entire summer lay ahead. It seemed anything was possible, even
if most days consisted of little more than waking up, watching television,
running around the neighborhood, eating sugary snacks, staying up way too late
and watching more bad television, and then falling asleep before doing the same
thing all over again the following day.
I’m an adult now and I don’t get summer vacation. I have
vacation time, but only a few weeks per year, and I’m quite sure that my boss
would have a few choice words for me if I tried to take all of my vacation time
at once. Since I won’t get a summer vacation, I’m forced to live through my
kids, hence the excitement about their last day of school.
(To show how ridiculously in love I am with summer vacation,
you should know that I made a paper chain in August to count down the days
until the last day of school. The chain had 175 links when I made it. Just five
days into the school year I don’t think the kids were even thinking about the
last day of school, but I was!)
Even though it’s not my summer vacation, it seems entirely
too short. Seventy-five days is nothing! It takes more time than that to grow a
decent tomato. That’s less than half the baseball season, and not even three
full moons (depending on the cycle, of course). When did summer vacation become
so short?
Actually, I don’t think the vacations have gotten any
shorter. Summer vacation is about as long for my kids as it was for me. The
only thing that has changed is me. I’ve gotten older.
And maybe that’s the real reason for the exaggerated summer
vacation length in the Disney song. For those of us who have to look into the
past to see our childhood, time continues to have its way with us. Those
seventy-something days of summer vacation when we were kids might have been the
equivalent of 104 days at our current age. I don’t know if it’s a
scientifically proven fact that time passes more quickly as we get older, but
it should be. We’re adults now, and looking back at those long, hot days we
imagine that our vacations must have been longer.
Luckily I don’t think my kids have inherited the affliction
that causes me to constantly think about time. They won’t have a secret hatred
for the 4th of July just because it’s a sign that summer’s close to
half over. They’ll be too busy enjoying the summer, and doing things kids
should be doing: playing in the backyard, walking to the park, staying up late,
and maybe even locating Frankenstein’s brain.
