Still savoring sweet taste of summers past

The summer before I started seventh grade, my father laid down an edict: Learn to type. If I wanted to take French as an elective the following year instead of typing class, I’d have to train myself. My brother, a year younger than me, had those orders, too. The thick manual had a bright-orange cover, and opened like a reporter’s notebook — by design, I’m guessing, so that you could flip to the next page of exercises while typing, without worrying about it snapping shut.

I don’t have any recollection of the hours of tedious repetition necessary to master typing without looking down at the keyboard. At some point, we switched to a computer game on the Radio Shack computer in which bright white letters tumbled down the screen. You had to type before the letter hit the bottom of the screen, and I can still picture the alphabet snowstorm, my fingers flying and the plastic keys loudly clacking.

Though my brother and I groused about it, I’m grateful that I learned how to type and don’t have to hunt and peck. I must admit, I’m inordinately proud that an online test just indicated that I type at 77 words per minute, nearly twice as fast as average. Thanks, dad. My mother benefited, too. I ended up typing some of her research papers, and each time, all those scientific terms stumped the spell checkers.

I’ve been thinking about summers and how kids and teenagers occupied themselves back in the era of long stretches of unstructured days. Did we really watch that much television? Yes. Did we really read that many books? Yes. My grandmother was around all the while, keeping an indulgent eye upon us, ready with snacks.

We also made mischief. One summer day, my brother dug holes in the yard of his best friend, who lived down the street. They shoveled down so deep into the hillside that they hit pipes, intent on creating a system of canals.

On another afternoon, riding my bike and enjoying the breeze rippling my hair, I decided to close my eyes while coasting down the hill. Almost immediately, I crashed into the corner of a neighbor’s tank of a car. I left no scratch on the vehicle, though the accident bruised my ego. A very, very bad idea and yet for a moment, with the sun and wind at my cheek, I felt like I was flying.

That’s changed. Like many working mothers, I’ve been juggling summer camps, transportation and caregiving to cover the twins the next two months. It’s maddening. Many parents scramble when school’s out for the summer, especially those with less flexibility in their jobs, or who have shift work that is scheduled at their employer’s discretion.

A census survey taken in the spring found that 4.2 million grade school children were home alone on a regular basis. Such arrangements were much more prevalent among middle school students than among those in elementary schools. More affordable, accessible options — that balance supervision with play — are vital to fill summers with happy memories.

For me, certain items are as evocative as Proust’s madeleine, though far more mundane, markers of Bay Area suburbia of the late ’80s and early ’90s: the flick of the sprinklers, me and my brother in our underwear and running at each other full-speed, gleeful until we smashed into each other, so hard that my plastic headband cracked in half. Drinking an icy-cold grape Cragmont soda, the dearly departed Safeway house brand. Nothing was ever so satisfying on a hot day, perhaps but for a rectangular scoop of Thrifty’s Chocolate Malt Crunch. Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” blasting over the water park (“Step by step/ Heart to heart/ Left, right, left/ We all fall down”), one of many onehit wonders that mark my girlhood. Skating with friends at the late, great Iceland in Berkeley. There was a biorhythm arcade machine in the lobby that dispensed a chart and your fortune.

The summer before going off to college, I met up with friends night after night, driving around with the windows rolled down and listening to our favorite mix tapes. Several times, we attempted to rent “The Bodyguard,” starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, from the video store, but it was always checked out. If I’d ever had a chance to see the movie, I probably would have forgotten the plot, but the memory of trying to rent — the feeling of silly futility, of smalltown teenage pastimes — remains intense. The memories you make when you were young, before leaving home, sometimes can loom bigger in your imagination, probably because your world was smaller back then.

What’s your summer madeleine?

For me, certain items are evocative as Proust’s madeleine, though far more mundane, markers of Bay Area suburbia of the late ’80s and early ’90s.