On these quiet summer days, The Citizen is publishing some short first-person narratives from local people with stories to share. No, it's not news, but sharing stories is what we're all about. We hope you enjoy these vignettes of everyday life.
“I picked the dandelion, closed my eyes, and blew a wish: I wish I could be normal,” I tell my husband. “I peeked out from under red eyelids. Drat. Still at the park at the end of the street. Hands still sticky from climbing pine trees. Still waiting for something interesting to happen so I’d have a story to tell on the first day of school…”
My summers were always boring compared to my classmates. “What did you do over the summer?” they’d all gush before launching into tales of grand trips on airplanes, weeks at summer camps with horses and canoeing, or heartwarming stories about staying in the country with grandparents.
My response, my only response, summer after summer was “I, uh, played at the park.” As if the park wasn’t available every single day of the year.
What was I supposed to say? I laid on the ground so bored that I imagined shapes in the clouds, not because they were really there, but because that’s what people did when they looked at clouds.
Or perhaps I should have said that I got all sticky from climbing the pine trees that lined the park. I perched there for hours watching people come and go, making notes in my dollar store notebook, pretending I was a spy.
But a real spy wouldn’t get so sticky.
Maybe I could have told them, “I watched helicopter seeds fall from the tree in my front yard or danced in the rain like some crazy person.” No, I couldn’t tell them that. The idea of showing them my poetry, the stuff that didn’t even rhyme, or my sketches—doodles, really—of the same boring things I’d seen all summer, made my stomach flip-flop.
No, I certainly couldn’t do that.
And staying up late into the night, curled up in my Mickey Mouse blanket, with a flashlight, rereading the Little House on the Prairie series was hardly worth bragging about. Reading wasn’t cool. No, the cool books were expansive sticker books, with sparkly, smelly, puffy, and kitten-soft stickers, and I had none of those. I had books with words.
I took the bus all on my own to the swimming pool for free swim, passed the laps requirement, and spent the afternoon swimming. But cool kids got rides in fancy cars to places like the pool, and they never went without a parent, so there’s no way I could tell them I took a dirty city bus all on my own. My cheeks burned just thinking about it.
There’s no way I could tell them that I skipped rocks across the retention ponds or explored the ruins of the monastery. I couldn’t tell them about the time when I pulled off my thick-soled shoe to find a rusty nail just poking through, irritating me like a pebble in my shoe. It would be a cool story, if not for the fact that I almost stabbed myself by foolishly exploring the ruins—again…
“So you want to send the kids to summer camp?” my husband asks as I finally trail off.
“Haven’t you been listening?” I reply. “I want them to unlock their creativity by being so bored that they see shapes in the clouds. I want them to marvel at the beauty of nature and capture it in notebooks with their words and sketches. I want them to learn independence and history by exploring the neighbourhood on their own. I want them to climb trees and play spies at the park. I want them to understand that resources are limited so they can walk past what’s popular and choose what they really want. I want them to look for ways to enjoy the day, even when it rains. I want them to blow on dandelions and make wishes. Normal is overrated.”
