Writing Prompt

Summer Vacation Writing Prompt

A chaser for the high school days prompt

Virginia State Parks, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s time to remember the fun part of childhood! If you participated in the High School Days Challenge (or even if you didn’t), please answer these questions:

1. Did you stay home or spend summers somewhere else?
2. If the answer to the previous was home, did you take a vacation usually at least once during summer?
3. Summer camp?
4. Did you usually sleep in every day or get up early like during the school year?
5. Did you spend more time indoors or outdoors during summer, or was it a pretty even split?
6. Was tanning a thing?
7. Was the beach a thing? Lake, ocean, creek, river?
8. What’s your favorite summer memory of your entire childhood?
9. Swimming pool? Yours, a friend’s, local public pool.
10. Were sports part of your summer? As a player? Spectator?
11. Did you ever get hooked on a soap opera during summer vacation?
12. What was your favorite quick cool-down drink or method?
13. Was there usually a visit to an amusement park?
14. Describe some annual local event that happened in summer that you were fond of.
15. Did you suffer summer boredom or did you basically just love it all the time?
16. Were there fireworks?

My answers below!

My answers:

1. Did you have hot summers, rainy summers, burning fires of Hell summers, or some other kind of summers? — Generally warm to hot, but they seemed so SHORT (still do.)
2. Did you stay home or spend summers somewhere else? — Always home.
3. If the answer to the previous was home, did you take a vacation usually at least once during summer? — Nope. We were not go anywhere people.
4. Summer camp? — Goodness no, I would have hated that.
5. Did you usually sleep in every day or get up early like during the school year? — I really don’t remember, but I think I probably stayed on more or less the same schedule.
6. Did you spend more time indoors or outdoors during summer, or was it a pretty even split? — Relatively evenly split, but I did spend much more time outdoors than I do now, that’s for sure.
7. Was tanning a thing? — Tried. Couldn’t. It just doesn’t happen.
8. Was the beach a thing? Lake, ocean, creek, river? — Never went near the ocean until I was older, but we had creeks and I remember one trip to a lake beach.
9. What’s your favorite summer memory of your entire childhood? — It’s impossible to pick one, but I notice that when I think of childhood summer these days, my mind goes sudden bursts of rain and trying to dash inside quickly.
10. Swimming pool? Yours, a friend’s, local public pool. — Didn’t swim. Still not into it.
11. Were sports part of your summer? As a player? Spectator? — Backyard kickball sometimes, attending Little League games but that was more in the spring.
12. Did you ever get hooked on a soap opera during summer vacation? — Yes, but not until the summer after 8th grade. General Hospital was the first.
13. What was your favorite quick cool-down drink or method? — I was a Kool-Aid fanatic as a kid, but I had a real thing about Orange Crush. When I was really hot and thirsty, that’s what I’d crave.
14. Was there usually a visit to an amusement park? — Sometimes. Hersheypark.
15. Describe some annual local event that happened in summer that you were fond of. — There was the annual fire company carnival. I could never wrap my head around the fact that when I was there, it was the playground area and parking lot of the school. It felt like a different world.
16. Did you suffer summer boredom or did you basically just love it all the time? — I loved summer vacation (keyword there being vacation), but occasionally I’d get hit with the “I’ve got nothing to do” whining jags.
17. Were there fireworks? — In my tiny town, no, until I was in my late teens. But, there were sparklers. We had backyard picnics that might be called block parties (but we didn’t call them that, we’d call them family picnics), and us kids would run around with sparklers.

Let’s go people! Denise Kendig Brandon Ellrich Brett Jenae Tomlin Lori Dooner Kerry Purvis Paula Shablo Ellen Baker Lu Skerdoo and anybody else who wants to play!