I turned to Matt, my best friend, and gave him a high five. Summer had finally arrived and we were leaving school for the last time. Well, not the last time per se, but the last time for about ten weeks. To a 10 year old, that's an eternity of vacation. And well-deserved - fourth grade had been a grueling year. We had mapped New Jersey's 21 counties. We'd presented the U.S. Presidents through costumes, posters and an ice cream party. We had suffered long hours of long division and learned all about the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It was almost too much to bear.
Matt and I were returning to a local day camp, hosted by a synagogue and the adjacent park. Though we complained, we secretly loved it. How could we not? From nine to four, we played kickball, tennis and baseball in the sun. At lunch, we leered at each other's baggies, jealous, judging, or simply angling for a trade. We made rockets or lanyards or misshapen potholders for our moms. And at free swim we horsed around, trying to avoid the lifeguard who lectured about paralysis from the neck down. Sometimes, she caught us.
The counselors were cool. Really, really cool. How could it be otherwise? They covered for us the time we dented the camp director's car, and whisked us to the office when we gashed our knees, and broke up our frequent locker-room shoving matches over who really was the best Ninja Turtle. The counselors were 16, 18 years old. Some of them went to college. Some of them even had cars. We loved them, and only hoped to achieve their level of awesomeness some day (I still haven't). After a long goodbye at the end of eight weeks, Matt and I received our "Level Four" Red Cross swimming cards and were sent home on our short, yellow bus for the last time. After two weeks at the beach with my family, it was back to school.
That sort of summer now seems very far away. We outgrew the day camp and went to sleep-away. In high school, we got summer jobs, as counselors or caddies or ice-cream scoopers, but at night we would always hang out with our friends. When we learned to drive, we could go to the beach ourselves, or to a friend's lake house, or to Manhattan for falafel at 2 a.m. We had changed, but summer hadn't; it still held the same combination of free time, fun, and freedom. In many ways, it was better.
Something shifted in college. Maybe it was that we had made new friends, or perhaps that our jobs were increasingly serious. Likely it was both. As the years rolled on, my friends and I began to see less and less of each other over the summer. Still, we took trips together. We still hung out after work, and we still had a lot of fun. I hardly noticed the change until this past summer, the last one for the Class of 2009. Many of my friends from Princeton and from home worked in New York just blocks from me, but I rarely saw them; there was work to do.
I wonder now where the summer went. Not just the time. Where was the sense of wonderment, of mystery? The free spirit, chased away, replaced by an adulthood that fits like an adolescent's suit bought slightly too large, knowing he'll grow into it. Daily commutes. Casual Fridays. Playtime on the weekends, if at all. Somewhere along the way, my class grew up, and I'm not sure when.
That spark of youth's summer has found a refuge at school, of all places. The freedom, the fun, the air of the infinite - all of them are here. And perhaps for the first time, I can truly appreciate Princeton. The campus seems greener; the meals tastier; my friends closer - but the time, shorter. We seniors are still here, yet feel apart. We remember our freshman week clearly, but it seems distant. This, now, is our true last summer, as we struggle to accept that next June stretches out into an uncertain future of certain, radical change.
Suddenly, teachers' dirty looks don't sound so bad.
Matt Kandel is an economics major from Boca Raton, Fla. He can be reached at mkandel@princeton.edu.
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