Before the Parade Passes By-


School Days, School Days, dear old Golden rule days! Reading and writing and rithmetic. Unquote.
In Wonder Women fashion we wonder how summertime flies by so much more quickly than ever before.
Our campers are coming home next week after 6 (yup!) weeks of camp. It feels as if cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese and iced coffee season(shout out to Linda Dietz) lasted much longer in the 60’s and 70’s.
We looked forward to school shopping and buying brand new white keds, blue loose leaf folders, colored tabs to divide social studies from algebra and colorful see thru pencil holders-but not so quickly.

A memorable excitement was wearing our new first day of school Villager outfit that sported our circle pins. Did Ginsburgs and Wechslers feature alpacas, madras blouses and new bangle bracelets second week in July? This summer June and July lasted 10 minutes.

Who remembers the street lights going on as our signal to stop playing and go home? Did they go on so much later in the summer then than they do now? When did Father Time become a Grandfather?
Please dude slow down we need to catch our breath. With self help books adding chapters on “recalibrating the Senior soul” we anxiously pull out plugs and hit the ground running. This abbreviated summer we took long walks and our games of play led the way to let’s have a cocktail around 5:00. We added a little Guacamole toast and summed things up with red velvet cupcakes. Got Shishito peppers anyone?

As long term memory takes center stage we fondly recall the days of climbing monkey bars, wearing very tight white rubber bathing caps to ward off the chlorine effects when we swam and how they added peanut butter to the ring ding formula and called them funny bones. So as we find ourselves in the first week of August with air pods in place we are “calling out around the world are you ready for a brand new beat?”
Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street.” Always love a Martha and the Vandellas tune as “ it doesn’t matter what we wore, just as long as we were there.”
So just for today as we eat half of a well toasted raisin bagel with cream cheese, sip our iced coffee with half and half, we’ll sing along as Frankie Valli croons about late December back in “63” and Betty Buckley reminds us to “let the memories live again.” Have a nostalgic Sunday.