Chapter 1
Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . The middle school students stared impatiently at the clock above the chalkboard, gripping the edges of their desks and twitching their feet. Six . . . five . . . four . . . All of the kids held their breath. Ever so slowly, inch by inch, they rose from their seats, their eyes growing wider, their hearts beating faster. Three . . . two . . . one . . . Finally! The bell rang.
The students sprang from their desks, knocking over chairs and spilling papers. The once quiet classroom erupted into yelps and whoops as the kids flooded into the hallways. Teachers barked out orders of calm and patience, but their demands went ignored. In one joyous wave the students roared down the corridors and burst out of the front doors, leaping down steps and sliding down handrails. Some kids held hands and skipped, while others laughed and giggled uncontrollably. So happy, so gleeful were the youth that even bullies refrained from giving nerds farewell noogies. Within minutes—nay, seconds, the school grounds were empty. The children fled as if the school had been on fire.
“We labored under hardships ‘unhumane’,” commented one boy who was going to be held back for a second time. “Even war prisoners are treated better than we is.”
Yes, for an adolescent nine months in a classroom was inhumane. But a youth’s reward more than compensated for this injustice: summer vacation. Three months of freedom. No alarm clocks, no tests, no pop quizzes, no mystery lunches. No teachers demanding something egregious like reading an entire chapter of a history book and writing a one-page summary. Oh, if only adults could understand the agony of reading five whole pages about a revolution in 1776 and some weird looking guys named Washington and Adams. “I may as well read ingredients of bread and write about that,” was one student’s reply to this task.
The first and only rule of summer vacation was that nourishment of the brain was forbidden. There would be no math, no science, no spelling tests. Nothing to interrupt watching videos and scrolling online, nothing that could be pointed to at the end of the day and said, “I accomplished this.” That’s why children respond so harshly when parents give chores and encourage reading during the summer.
"Reading!” the youth scoffs. “How dare thee. It’s treason you ask of me. No one reads in the summer if they don’t have to.”
The only learning that was acceptable was the accidental kind like, say, if one were drug to a museum on a family vacation. But a kid should never be outwardly happy about this, and express displeasure at the inconvenience in high-pitched nasal tones with phrases like, “I’m bored. My feet hurt. I’m hungry. I have gangrene.”
So as the group of students sauntered home on the final day of school they discussed amongst themselves what the upcoming weeks would contain. “If my mom wakes me before noon I’ll call the authorities on her,” one boy assured his buddy.
"Before noon?” answered this buddy. “I plan on spending at least a week in the same pajamas gaming. If I go outside it’ll be because the house is on fire.”
A nearby girl retorted, “You guys are lame. Me and my friends are going to the mall everyday.”
The boys rolled their eyes. The girls did the same. And so it followed that the swarm of students splintered off into ever smaller groups, each planning and scheming upon their forthcoming months of freedom.
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