One never appreciates the significance of summer holidays as much as when one is an adult and forced to superintend the activities of youngsters, who fully appreciate the significance of summer holidays.
It still beats me as to how my nephew who groans and moans and has to be dragged out of bed and plonked in front of the television set with a glass of milk and a plate of idlis at 7.00 am on school days, can bounce up like a well-oiled spring and start stirring hell out of the place by 5.00 am on summer holidays and weekends.
Children operate on this perverse principle that they are sick, their head is aching, their stomach is paining, their knees are hurting, so can they “please, please, stay away from school,” only to fully recover the minute the school bus rounds the corner without having picked them up due to your gullibility in believing them. And if you are stone-hearted enough to heartlessly send them to school on a Monday, you can be sure you won’t hear the end of your cruelty & tyranny till Friday. By Saturday of course all signs of illness would have mysteriously vanished or transferred magically to you.
For my nephew the holiday, hasn’t started till he has properly tangled up the yowling, furious cat in quantities of yarn, written silly messages with toothpaste on the bathroom mirror, dumped a generous quantity of flour on himself and on the floor in an attempt to eat forbidden candies, flooded the bathroom, kitchen, living room and maybe even the neighbour’s balcony in his attempt to have bath, marked out the floor with marbles, lego bricks and rice krispies as a booby-trap to the unwary passerby to trip and break his/her neck, turned on the TV at full blast so that the word “holiday & weekend” becomes a misnomer and broken some hideously ugly vase that some loving relative fostered on you!!! That’s when the day has started for him at 5.00 am..
By 6.00 am when the household is fully awake and cursing their stupidity in staying in the same house as the boy genius, who would give Dennis the Menace a run for his money, he would have progressed to better things, like Tarzan-testing the cable wires on the terrace by swinging across with a howl to set terror into the heart of every street dog, ratcheting up a string of cans, bottles and other miscellaneous articles on the tail of the unsuspecting neighbour’s dog, which was misguided enough to be lured by a packet of biscuits….
Sigh!! Why can’t I, who can fully appreciate the peace and solitude that comes with summer holidays, ever have summer holidays; but must be condemned to warming my office seat, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months a year…the world is so unfair!
Spinnin' a yarn 