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This Week's Attitude
Despite summer solstice arriving a week ago and daylight lasting until well after 8 p.m. for several weeks now, when you're stuck in a classroom about five days a week for eight hours or so, it hardly seems like summer. No sooner does the weather begin to warm in April or May, and days steadily grow longer, than the outdoors beckon and youngsters get the itch to stay out later. However, when they realize there are still a couple of months left in the school year, it elicits hushed groans that tend to get audible, particularly when parents pressure children to finish homework before they go out to play with friends for the evening. As April and May elapse, students start daydreaming about summer vacation - maybe camp or a family trip - and other activities, like sports or going to the beach, while the teacher conveys lessons that you better have heard for end of term exams. The last week of the school year, after tests and projects are complete, can seem like a month. The last day like a week, as minutes and hours pass - oooh sooo sloooowly. But, when you walk out of the school building that last day, the pressure of schoolwork, and the responsibilities that come with it, instantly vanishes. For some, it may feel like they've been freed from nine months of education captivity because no matter how much some youngsters enjoy school, there's nothing like being young, unfettered, without a care in the world to wander about and have fun with friends. After I graduated from elementary school, my parents bought me my first portable radio. I guess they understood my budding love for rock and roll and rewarded me for better-than-average grades that year. It was a hard cover book-size Motorola with artificial red leather trim and a black grill and a convenient handle. For a few days that summer, I was the envy of friends and other kids who hung around with us, as we listened to new songs on two popular AM - FM did not yet exist - stations: WMCA and WABC. Some songs from summers of my youth became classics, especially tunes from popular groups such as The Four Seasons, who have renewed recognition thanks to the current Broadway hit, "Jersey Boys;" girl groups, like The Shirelles and The Shangri-Las; The Tokens and their classic, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which, I discovered years later, is based on a Zulu tribal war chant, and numerous other groups that came and went, but left indelible recollections on my generation. Some songs were one-hit wonders, others utterly forgettable by summer's end. Like Manfred Mann's "Do Wah Diddy Diddy." A silly song with a sillier title, but I can still sing every word whenever I hear it. Yet, some songs still revive memories of a special person, place or long ago summer moment. I'll never forget the first time I heard The Animals. It was the height of the 1960s British Invasion, after The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five had gained fans. It seemed every week a new English band emerged. I was at Manhattan Beach with friends - and another portable radio I'd bought with earnings from an afterschool job - when our ears perked up and we were captivated as Eric Burdon sang an old blues riff, which was fresh to our uninitiated ears, "The House of The Rising Sun." Isn't it funny how after all these years, middle-aged adults remember lyrics from dozens of songs from their youth, but probably can't recall most of the lessons they learned in school? There are literally dozens of songs about the joys of summer, but none sum it up like the Motown golden oldie, which I paraphrase for every kid who ever looked forward to the last day of school and anticipated the happy days of summer: "Summer's here and the time is right for playing in the street…" And savor these summer's days while you can, there are just over 70 days left until the new school year begins.
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