Endless Summer Nights

I took a long walk tonight at twilight. It was such a nice night, low 60s & clear. It wasn't too cold or hot. Just me, myself & I on a little over an hour long walk as the sun said good night and the moon appeared. For me, it's really feels like the start of summer.

During my teen years, I lived only a few miles from where I live now. The housing development I live in now was being built at the time, so it's weird to walk by houses that I had been in when they were in the middle of being built. They look the same but different, both at the same time.

Tonight I found this really cool trail through our housing development. Part of it is wooded, part isn't. The sun had already set, and it was starting to get dark. But it was still warm-ish out. It just took me back to being a teenager and how much I loved summer nights. I've never been one for the heat of summer days, but oh how I love summer nights. A lot of my best memories involve summer nights. And some not so good memories too, but the mostly happy stuff definitely outweighs the negative.

Have I ever said that one thing I appreciated while growing up was my immense freedom? My mom was a head-in-the-sand person and really didn't keep track of me very well. For instance, I stayed home by myself since I was 8 years old. And we're not talking half an hour here or there. At 8 years old, I stayed home during the summer. Like 40 hours a week staying at home by myself.

So by the time I was 16 and got a car, my mom and I had worked out an unstated system. I basically didn't have a curfew, and I wasn't going to step over the line to make her come up with a curfew. So if I didn't ruffle feathers, then I could do what I wanted. I was usually home by 10pm if I actually went out, but most weekends I stayed home quite a bit. Most nights I'd read and play on the computer or watch stuff like 90210. I was a homebody then just like I am now. Occasionally I did go out, much more on summer nights than any other time. Most of the time I didn't do anything bad. I just went to the movies, walked the pathetic mall (which has become even more pathetic in the last 15 years) or hung out at a friend's house. The few girls I hung out with were about as exciting as I was. If I went out with a guy friend, I was usually much more conscientious about not rocking the boat and being home at a decent hour.

I remember the one night that I got home LATE. Like 1am kind of late. My mom had waited up and was reading. "I was starting to get worried. What were you up to?" She actually didn't even look all that worried.

So as not to rock the no curfew boat, I responded that I was hanging out at Kim's house and then we decided to see the last movie of the night and then we talked some afterward & I guess we just lost track of time. "Oh, okay. It's just kind of late." Whew, and I escape trouble and made a mental note to be in by 10pm-ish for the next month mentally.

What was funny was that had I told her the truth, I would be in all sorts of trouble. You learn so fast how to lie to your parents, don't you? There's no way I could literally say what I was up to.

"Kim, Leslie and I went driving along R u s t o n W a y looking for guys. We met some guys and went back to one guy's house. They gave us beer. We all sat around drinking. Kim had 2-3 beers and started to get loopy. Then she disappeared with the weird looking guy, and Leslie and I had to go find her in this big house. We finally find her. And then the guys want to play poker. After we divvy out all the chips, and then they decide they want to play strip poker. We start playing, and by then Kim's had like 6 beers. And then that's when we learned that it's better to take off your bra before your shirt. You could kind of say it was an educational sort of experience. And then Kim starts puking, which was really good because Leslie was about to lose her shirt in the strip poker game. And then Leslie and I decide that we should probably use the excuse of getting Kim home to get out of there. And then we go to Denny's to get Kim stabilized. And then we talk about the strange night with the guys we met as Kim holds her stomach and lays her head on the fake wood Denny's table. And then we try to sneak Kim back into her house without her parents finding out that she's drunk. And then it's like a "What About Bob" scenario when her dad starts talking to us and asking us all sorts of questions, but we think we passed the test and he wasn't too suspicious. And then I take Leslie home. And, well, here I am and that's how I spent the last 6 hours."

I'm not THAT stupid. I don't have a death wish. Therefore, lying to your parents about your summer night whereabouts is definitely the best policy. And I know that Julia will lie to me too. But I hope I won't be stupid enough to believe her very bland stories.