Oh, how different times were back then. As a teenager, I worked at a pizza joint until 2-3:00am depending on how big a mess we made. Then, we went out for breakfast and played 4-board backgammon until 4:00 or 5:00am, slept for 2-3 hours and headed out. It was softball teams, car repairs, lake parties, weekends up north (parties while camping), concerts, car repairs, parties, softball, biking, water skiing, retread tires, canoeing, softball, bad golfing, go-karting, kite flying at the dunes, car repairs, river floating, whitewater canoeing, fishing, retread tires, hiking... man, we did it all and we did it all outdoors.

When I was littler, we had a traditional, annual schedule of 3-week sessions of swimming lessons right after school let out— from which, we went directly to the lake, then the road trip that took a bloody eternity every year (so spoiled!), then every waking moment on bikes and the lakes, then, "my mom's vacation" when my dad dropped us and Mom with the big tin can at the campground up north for two weeks. She let us run wild the whole time while she relaxed. Then, it was the coming down: shopping for school clothes— trying on hard shoes, wools, and polyesters in anticipation of cold weather. Hated it!

We woke at sunrise every day, played hard rain or shine, ate pockets-full of animal crackers and baloney on the run, slept over in each others' backyards, and always came home with green feet at dusk to the sounds of yelling mothers throughout the neighborhood.

Sometimes, we snuck out in the night and ran around the neighborhood in our nighties.