Of course, since you haven't give me any advice yet, I'll probably end up with a mullet on one side and a buzz cut on the other.

Well, I have put some thought to it and will try to come up with some pictures tomorrow.

Lest anyone forget I was horribly cute as a child.

Yeah, but even better as an adult.

We had just moved to Reston, which is a "New Town" and it had just opened. There were only 100 or so families there--all of pioneering spirit and liberal bent. My parents had spent all the money they had on buying the house, so we were broke, although I didn't know that at the time. We lived three townhouses from the community pool, so my brothers and I went swiming every day. They were the two redheads wearing t-shirts in the pool to protect their fair skin from the sun. When I was waterlogged, I would run home barefoot, and gird myself for the blast of cold air as I slid open the glass doors onto the back deck and ran upstairs to change into a t-shirt and shorts.

I would bike to the Plaza [link] and wander around the hardware store, which was delightfully disorganized and overfull and had many bins of interesting nuts and bolts and racks of fishing lures and an ancient "test it yourself" display for TV tubes. (My mom now lives in a condo over the location of the old hardware, which is a thai restaurant) then across the Plaza to The Drugstore, where a vanilla coke could be had at the lunch counter.

Then home for a quick dinner and a night spent catching fireflies--a local lab was offering $1.00 per five of them, and we all thought we were going to get rich. Virginia has lots of firelfies and endless rolling heat lightning punctuating the crickets chirping.

Yeah, but even better as an adult.

Only occasionally.

Well, I have put some thought to it and will try to come up with some pictures tomorrow.

Yay! Thanks.

My summer days at 10 years old consisted of riding my pink, banana seat bicycle all over town and beyond, followed constantly by my mentally retarded cocker spaniel. I'd ride several miles into the country to see my cousin who was invariably bailing hay.

Then I'd ride back into town to buy penny candy with loose change. Sometimes, I'd have enough to get an ice-cold bottle of coke (the old fashioned machine at the gas station in town sold the big, 16 oz. glass bottles). Then I'd take the bottle down to the store and get the 10 cent deposit back and buy a freeze pop.

When I couldn't find money and it was really hot out, we'd stop on the big, black paved patches on the streets and pop the tar bubbles.

It was a very small town.

Timelies all!

I don't know that I could distinguish age 10 from age 9 or age 11.(I think I've just forgotten a lot of my childhood/adolescence in self-defense) I do know that at some point during the summer I would be at Camp Jori(Jewish Organization of Rhode Island) for sleepaway camp. Beyond that? Not much. Sorry...

Boxes, boxes everywhere, and still we need more. Must. Go. Pack.

That sounds like most other days in my hometown. There was a Dairy Queen where we could get those cones with the hard chocolate shells if we just went on an adventure through her neighborhood.

OK, tomorrow if I start complaining of digestive insult, remind me I am sitting here with a bowl of cherries and it was all my fault.

I love cherry season.

Summers about that age...well, either running loose in the neighborhood, on our swingset, in the tractor tire sandbox, or the whole neighborhood in one of our many pools (cheapy pools filled from the hose.) Or digging for dinosaurs in the overflow ditch behind the houses. Smell of mud, really. NM mud and wet limestone. Mmm. The skin-tightening burn of NM heat and being 4000 ft closer to the sun than I am here.

The other that pings (mainly because I'll be back there for the first time in over a decade) is the farm in MN at twilight, running around with the cousins in the yard and family garden, playing Ghost and Starlight, Starbright. I only vaguely remember the rules. The parents would be sprawled in various webbed aluminum fram chairs, drinking suntea. It smelled of...farm. And pigs. Oh lord, it smelled of pigs. My uncle has at least 4 barns now. But you really do stop smelling it after about 5 minutes. The smell of the crabapples (which tasted like ass, but smelled so good!), cucumbers off the vine, sweet corn straight off the stalk (gotta pick those nasty worms off!) and blood and raspberries (because those bushes are evil!) Hot alfalfa and wheat fields.

Heather, I also grew knowing my maternal cousins fairly closely, despite us being scattered all over the US (and sometimes overseas as well.) Because of where I grew up, this didn't seem out of place (hispanic community there keeps family close.) Weird to think it isn't a norm.

There was a Dairy Queen where we could get those cones with the hard chocolate shells if we just went on an adventure through her neighborhood.

Ours was A&W, which I was only allowed to bike to with dad. Well, I think it closed before I was actually biking under my own power, but I still remember the view from the bright yellow plastic bikeseat mounted on the back of the green schwinn. It was a pretty touring bike.

When I got older, it was the Sonic on the corner of Valley and Picacho.

I love cherry season.

Me, too. That reminds me I need to get some.