Eaten Alive

I must taste really good.

My legs have more bug bites and scabs than they did during my heyday of playing Freeze Tag and Capture the Flag.

I bet I had you going there, didn't I?

I don't know where these pesky bugs are coming from. I am certain I don't have bed bugs and I haven't noticed a mosquito in the vicinity for quite some time. That said, my legs look like a flesh version of connect-the-dots and so I'm wondering whether I have a secret bedfellow hidden somewhere in my sheets.

I've concluded summertime isn't as fun for grown-ups.

Sure. I love lazy day drinking on patios, going to concerts and cookouts and visiting street fairs and festivals. I love all of that. But I think I liked summer as a kid even better.

I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Burning rubber cruising the neighborhood on my sweet Raleigh 10 speed. Catching minnows and discovering treasure (or fossils) in the neighborhood creek. Running around the back yard with a jar full of lightning bugs.

The smell of fresh cut grass and the ticking sound of a refreshing sprinkler.

Early mornings doing laps at swim team practice. Sucking on those long, plastic tubed popcicles. Laying around in the afternoons in my bathing suit watching Nelly Olsen pull some crappy stunt on Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I loved our family vacations. We'd go up to a resort in Minnesota or to Hilton Head and we would have a blast. Rollerblading. Canoeing. Swimming. Tie-dying shirts. In Minnesota I developed a mean technique for shuffleboard. My parents would let us eat junk food and fast food the whole ride to and from our destination - it was totally sweet.

We'd always get some time in to see our grandparents in Youngstown. Those little excursions included culinary creations of jello filled with fruit or candy (yes, hard candy) and the most God-awful salads of iceberg lettuce, cut up bits of Kraft singles and bits of bologna. My grandpa would eat those crappy salads we made and say they were the best things he'd ever eaten.

Summertime was sparklers and tanning without trying and playing four square.

God, where did the time go?