Legs

ghdujcgfkfAs a young student in India, every June, the first day of school, I was asked to write an essay that was always titled: "How I spent my summer vacation". "And make it interesting," my teachers would advise. I assumed that mere recountings of my days spent reading Nancy Drews would not qualify as "interesting". Neither would my detailed accounts of making paper straws and trying to blow bubbles with glycerin solution. So I always made something up--like visits to fairly exotic locales like Poona. I made sure the locales were not very exotic (very tempted to write the Himalayas once) or else the teacher would smell a rat.

II

Now that I am older, I can say it like it is. So here's a sampling from my diary of a few weeks this summer:

Week #1:

Every year, we have faithfully vacationed in Camden, ME. It is truly a wondrous place right on the ocean and qualifies for a very relaxing vacation.

This year, we thought we'd try something different and booked ourselves a pilgrimage to Disney World. Along with apple pie, a trip to Disney World probably completes the quintessential American childhood experience. So we all flew down to Florida. The first day, it rained so much a twenty-minute drive from airport to hotel took us three and a half hours! Senior daughter (SD) broke down at some point during hour #2 and demanded we go right back to Boston. We finally reached the hotel in one piece and had a wonderful time. Disney World was all right. The girls had fun and we really, really, enjoyed the hotel, its pools, and the drinks! At the end, SD said to us, "Isn't Camden, ME so peaceful"? If that was meant as a hint that we should have gone there instead, I pretended not to have got it. She quickly added, "I love Disney World too, especially the pools"!

Week #2:

We took the girls to sign up for the summer reading program at the local library. I could rave and rant endlessly about most reading programs targeted at kids, but I will save that for some other time. Both SD and younger daughter (YD) dutifully signed up and were promptly given "prizes" as incentives just for signing up! The librarian chirped enthusiastically, "And if you read your quota, you will get more prizes". That was all YD needed to hear. She enquired what her quota was--six picture books for the entire summer. She checked out the first six books that she could lay her hands on that looked moderately interesting. That night, she insisted we read all six of them out to her. From the next day on, for the next week until we could visit the library again, all I would hear from her was: "Aai, can we go get the prizes", "Aai, when can I go to the library to get the prizes". On and on and on. I finally caved in and redeemed her reading log for a prize--a "crystal" ring that broke in the car, on the way home. Even today the broken crystal lurks around in the house and shows up at odd times especially in the middle of a vacuuming session.

After prize redemption, the girls still do read books, but every single time we go to the library now, YD loudly asks the librarian: "Will I get any prizes today"?!

Week #4:

We have a local farm stand that allows junta to pick any and every kind of fruit (and now vegetable) imaginable. We enthusiastically went on a hayride and picked out five pounds of strawberries during strawberry picking season. After that, it was strawberry lassi, strawberry shortcake, strawberry muffins. The only thing we didn't toss strawberries in, was in our sambar. Gotta draw the line somewhere! Since

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