The morning is ugly. It is only 65° and cloudy and damp. The day won’t get much better though it will get just a bit warmer, up to 68°. It’s time to break out those bathing suits! The dogs have been out a while. They enjoy this weather. I figure, though, they’ll soon be inside as it is morning nap time.

When I was a kid, our dog Duke was not allowed on furniture, but he was a smart dog. At night he slept on the couch. We knew but never caught him. When we walked downstairs in the morning, we could hear him get off the couch, but he always greeted us at the foot of the stairs. When he was really old, he slept in my bedroom on my shaggy white rug, the one with a bite out of it from my hamster who had pulled part of the rug into its cage, chewed off a piece and made quite the comfy bed.

When I was a kid, the weekdays were all the same. My mother woke me up, and I went downstairs where breakfast was already on the table. After breakfast, I’d get dressed, grab my school bag and lunch box then leave for school. It wasn’t a long walk. It was a straightway once I got down the hill, maybe about two blocks. In school, it was the same subjects in mostly the same order every day. The only differences were art and music which alternated days. We ate lunch, had recess then finished the day. I walked home.

My whole week sounds boring, but it never was. I was a kid. I didn’t know boring. Every day was an adventure. Walking to school sometimes meant collecting the colorful leaves. Other days my friend and I skipped to school. I always think of skipping as joyful. In the school yard, before the bell, we met up with friends and chatted though we had seen each other the day before and the day before that. When the nun rang the hand bell, we lined up class by class and two by two in sort of a Noah’s ark impression without the animals. We stored away out jackets in the cloak room, and the day began in earnest.

When I got home, I changed from my school clothes and went out to play, depending on the weather. My friends and I often played games like Red Light, Hide and Seek or Simon Says. In the warmer days, we explored the field and woods below my house. I can still see that field and the dead tree at the end of the field. One giant limb of that tree was across the path. We could have walked around it but we never did. We climbed over it. Kids do that. Easy wasn’t aways fun.