Summer Checklist (2005)
I've been making checklists since you were just an itch in your daddy's pants!
The best summer I ever had was the summer I made a checklist for each day. I made them with my cousin Teri (we were both the third child in our respective families) and our siblings would make fun of us for it. They were older, but still, to this day the most clever thing I heard they did that summer was smoke weed on the roof outside of Tanya’s bedroom. Good one guys.
Teri and I were inspired by this book that told us about a girl’s day. Taking a shower, brushing your teeth, going somewhere, coming back —that sort of all-inclusive thing. We started creating our own daily to-do lists that mapped out our constellation of priorities. It’s crazy how dense the days got, and how we kept data of it all. Because we kept data of it all. We were efficient children, and so we had fun. Things just meant more when we wrote them down and checked them off. We’d write them down on our hands, or on a box of Milk Duds, or on the inside cover of Meet Kit: An American Girl 1934. I want to write about this summer. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to find one of those lists. I’d like for it to tell me what to do.
This list will expose the privilege it was to leave Grass Valley to summer in Palmdale. This is about the backyard of the house on the corner of the cul-de-sac on Golfer’s Drive, and how it’s features became my benefits.
Pool
I can remember needing someone to open the gate, and how mean or how nice that person could be. One time we got so sunburnt, my aunt made us stay inside for a day. The next day we had a major homecoming, but not without an inch of white sunscreen, a baseball cap and sunglasses. I didn’t feel like me in all that. Out in the pool, the ice cream truck’s melody would change our mermaid tails to skinny, brown legs and then we’d run. We got in trouble for running through the house all sopping wet, so to make up for the time toweling off we started putting our quarters for the ice cream truck at ready, in a Ziploc, by the front door, the night before.
Slide
My Auntie Trisa and Uncle Scotty were cool. They had this big white slide installed with a silver metal ladder, and if you were too loose, runnin’ around actin’ a fool you could fuck yourself up on that ladder! You had to watch your step. An adult could turn the slide on, and water would run down, and you could get some air off that thing. Actually, my Uncle Scotty made his own pool business and called it Pool Kooks. That’s what we were!
Diving Board
The diving board was fun because we would play a game called Colors with Sissy, Sonny, Matthew, Tammra, and Tanya. It was always a treat to play with the older kids. I’m 25 and it’s still nice to do any thing with any one of those people (except Matthew because he’s dead) (My dad always says he’s deader than fuck). This is how you play Colors: Everyone clings to the wall on one side of the pool and chooses a color. Whoever’s IT stands on the diving board with their back to the pool, and begins calling out Colors. If and when they call out your Color, you have to try swimming to the other side of the pool without being tagged (Like this post if you’ve played Colors). Some of us swam loud (Sonny) and some of us swam quiet (Teri), but it didn’t matter as long as you were quick. Besides that, a diving board is just cool. I could do front flips. Matthew could do gainers!
Jacuzzi
There was a jacuzzi attached to the pool with a little waterfall that was always our mermaid shower. I want to write about the feeling of my body in the cool pool with hot jacuzzi water flowing on my beautiful, long mermaid hair. I’d get myself off on the jets while having conversations with my cousins (I don’t do that anymore). One time, I went to that house in the middle of winter. I thought the jacuzzi cover meant it was frozen over like the ponds back home. Of course I just fell in and got my pajamas soaked, and my cousins still bring it up.
Trampoline
There was a stone path leading up to the trampoline, and we’d go looking for worms underneath the stones. We’d find them. We’d keep them in Tupperware Vent ‘N Serve containers so they could breathe. On the trampoline I could do front handsprings and front flips. We’d choreograph entire routines to a Hannah Montana song, drag chairs out to the lawn, and make paper invitations for our moms to come and watch the performance. From the trampoline, you could climb to the roof of Teri’s dollhouse. We’d chill on the dollhouse roof and have the most meaningful conversations I think I’ve ever had.
It was always a thrill when the big kids wanted to jump with us, but that thrill turned quickly into horror as soon as we started playing Crack The Egg. I was always The Egg. I would always Go Flying…
Well of course it’s beautiful how completely over That Summer is. I probably wouldn’t have cared to write about it if Auntie Trisa and Uncle Scotty still lived at that house on Golfer’s Drive. There are plenty of pools in my life that I never bat an eye at, so I guess it’s just something about That Summer that’s really stuck with me. Something about the checklists. Something about summer optimized.
Ive always loved to do lists too!! ESPECIALLY when i get to fill it w fun plans rather than responsibilities
Love your mind always