FoxTrot by Bill Amend for June 02, 2019

Changing the adverb from “aimlessly” to “deliberately”, huh? Nice, Peter, really nice.

I’m surprised she and Roger haven’t told him to go get a summer job!

Rightttttttttt

To his credit, he does specifically reference waking up in the morning, so he’s got more gumption than I had when I was school age.

He’d be doing it deliberately, not aimlessly, so what would her beef be?

If you don’t give yourself things to do during the summer, Mom and Dad will fill that calendar for you!

My parents always had our ‘Summer schedule’ all planned out .. even if it was made from day to day. There was grass to cut, weeds to pull, a garden to hoe, basement to clean, garage to clean, windows to wash … the list was endless. Then we got smart and signed up for the book reading club at the local library … “sorry, can’t do that right now mom, I’m reading a book for the Library Book Reading Club, so I can get Extra Credit when I return to school!” (do kids go to libraries any more ??)

My parents owned the school buses for the district, so our summers were spent scrubbing them out getting ready for inspection before the next school year. Ugly, disgusting job! And at the end, for our summer’s work, if we were lucky, we might get $20 to spend at the county fair or for some school clothes.

I can now understand the adult insistence on kids doing something constructive with their vacation time, but completely unstructured loafing is still fun, more so when you have less time for it.

At least he used brain cells to come up with that plan.

Where did the dailies go?

You’ve got almost 80 days to write that over and over. Do yourself a favor and get a rubber stamp!

Enjoy your summer vacation, kids. It is the last time in your life you will get more than two consecutive weeks off in your life. In your life.

And when Andy sees his list, she will make the following edits:

June 3: Get a job, you shiftless bum.

June 4: Get a job, you shiftless bum.

June 5: Get a job, you shiftless (expletive)!

Don’t forget eating like a glutton!

They became nighties?

What? No Fortnite?

That excuse won’t fly with her, Peter.

My parents tried having me use a daily planner for the summer I graduated high school. I filled it in with things such as "sipping cocktails along side the deck pool on a cruise to Europe.

I wound up getting what I wanted, which was to spend a month camping and fishing with my grandfather (instead of going on our family annual two week trip to Las Vegas) BEST time I ever had. I turned 18 and enlisted right after we got back and Gramps died from cancer a couple months later (nearly 50 years later I still think back on that summer and smile)

It takes a heap of work to be good at loafing, that’s why hobbies were invented.

Not that my parents ever asked, but my goal for every summer vacation starting with 2nd grade through graduation was reading at least 7 books a week. My parents had no problem with that and didn’t consider it loafing. Even with that goal I had plenty of time for playing outdoors with my friends and helping Mom with chores.

Okay. The first day on my vacation, what I did on my summer vacation, the first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went downtown to get a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The second day on my summer vacation, I woke up, then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore. The third day on my summer vacation, I woke up…