the hot, lazy, hazy days of summer

 This year we have had a long hot summer.  Second hottest July on record...WHEW!! I just start sweating thinking about it! Being a mature woman now, the heat seems to take a toll on me these days. Though I enjoy the great outdoors, this year I spent most of my time watching the great outdoors from the inside.  

  I remember when we were kids we never thought about the heat.  We spent endless hours playing outside.  Riding bicycles every where... roller skating in the streets...a baseball game at the neighbors house...swimming at the Royal Avenue pool...going to the creek to catch crayfish and tadpoles, and the list goes on and on.

  One of our favorite games to play was Kick-the-can!!  We would go door to door get everyone together to play this awesome game that involved kicking a "can" (a ball), everyone running to hide. Then one poor soul was left behind to find everyone without getting the ball kicked again. We spent hours hiding, many times in a ditch behind a friends house and sometimes under another friends house (I can't believe we actually crawled up under that house...spiders and creepy crawlers and all!) We usually ended up hiding together so we could talk, laugh and sneak an occasional peek to see if we had been spotted. We always ended up playing until after the sun went down. Today, the friends that use to play kick-the-can, still remember the great times we had, way back then.

  That hot summer sun never prevented us from going out and having wonderful time!  Never even thought about it.  It was such an amazing time we had, just being with our friends.

  Today, I will stand here and look out over my back yard,(from inside the air conditioned house of course),and reminisce about the hot, lazy, hazy days of summer...way back then.  I hear the shrills of screams and laughter  as if I were there now... to all my kick-the-can buddies...you remember, don't you???