More Experiments in Time Travel

I think this summer is making me younger. 

     I'm serious. When the spring rains finally ended and my yard bloomed, something happened to me.  It was subtle at first--the volume on the car radio slowly got louder. I came home from work and announced that we were going to the ice cream place for dinner. Before you know it, here I am leaving work to drive straight to the lake house, go from there to a party, from there to a campground in Maine and stay on the beach until  all hours carrying on like I'm not a middle-aged mother of three, and THEN get up at 3:00 AM to drive to work. 

     It is all reminiscent of my Summer Tour years, when I'd work a few days then travel from city to city to see a series of concerts, getting home in time to get cleaned up before returning to my classroom full of three-year-olds.  I'd teach all week, waitress a few nights, maybe, then hit the road again.  Niagara Falls, Washington, DC, Philly...Life was a grand adventure  and I had the boundless energy of youth to take it on.

    Time passed and I grew up.  I married My Persoal Chef (bless him, he followed me around the northeast for one summer when he was first chasing me), we had these incredible kids, we bought a beautiful, hundred-year-old Queen Anne Victorian. I started going to bed at a reasonable hour and making sure that everyone had well-balanced meals and clean, folded laundry.  Concert trips became weekly trips to Home Depot and the grocery store. It's the natural order of life and it has been very satisfying.

Until the temperatures rose and the fireflies returned a few weeks ago.

     Suddenly, I'm searching YouTube for videos from Grateful Dead shows from the 80s.  A friend comes to visit and instead of putting on the kettle for tea, I find myself mixing a pitcher of Concoction (a fizzy melon, mint, lime and gin drink that tastes like summer vacation).  I laugh right out loud when my Other Favorite Nieces say something inappropriate instead of scolding them. In fact, I respond with an even more scandalous anecdote.  

I'm acting like a kid.

     No.  It's not a mid-life crisis.  I'm not going to buy a convertible, get a boob job, or run off with my secretary. There's just something about the summer that has loosened my tightly wound bits.

     During the rest of the year, you will never catch me playing air guitar in my Cubicle-of-Doom.  Or sharing a scorpion bowl with a twenty-something colleague at the end of a work day. Or going along with the young--really young--Cool Cousins who think it is an excellent idea to introduce their mothers to Cards Against Humanity.  Any other season and there is no way I'd be explaining to a retired librarian what causes blue balls.  Any other season, I'd be acting my age. Come to think of it, so would the Awesome Aunts. So maybe there's a genetic link to the time-space continuum I should explore. . .