Nothing to Do Is Better Together
They are like a rock band in its waning days, watching too much TV and blaming one another for all their problems, waiting for something--anything--to jump-start their lives.
“Dad?” my lovely and patient older daughter says.
“Yes?”
“I just did a phone survey,” she says.
“And?”
“My friends have nothing to do also,” she says. “There is now officially nothing to do.”
Nothing to do. To kids, it is the worst of all possible problems.
To them, summer should be like one long action-adventure movie, with asteroids landing in the pool and giant lizards lurching out of the toilets.
Of course, it’s not like there’s really nothing to do. One recent morning, they spent three hours yodeling. In the afternoon, they poured Pepsi on ant hills. For most kids, that would be a full day.
“Dad, there’s nothing to do,” the little red-haired girl says. “Trust me.”
It is like this every year. At first, the summer is full of activities. Backpacking trips and computer classes. Tennis camp and baseball.
Then, one day in August, it all ends. Suddenly, all they have is one another. Which is a lot like nothing at all.
“I hate summer,” says my older daughter, scanning the back-to-school ads.
“I hate summer too,” says the little red-haired girl.
And just when all hope seems lost, when this seems like the most miserable summer a kid has ever had, the doorbell rings.
“You sounded so sad on the phone,” my daughter’s friend says, standing on the porch. “What’s for lunch?”
So they eat lunch and complain that there is nothing to do, then plan some great slumber party, where all the girls who have nothing to do could do nothing together.
“Not too many,” her mother warns.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” the daughter says.
And a few hours later they start arriving, with their sleeping bags and their pillows, a slumber party so huge that you can’t get near the house.
First the Suburbans. Then the Expeditions. Finally the Humvees and the Armored Personnel Carriers, dropping kids off, then mowing down the flower beds and the mailboxes as they go, their tires too big for normal-sized driveways.
“They’re here!” the little red-haired girl yells, racing from the window.
My older daughter’s friends trudge to the door, some carrying their sleeping bags 50 feet or more, arriving as if finishing some sort of iron-teenager competition.
“We made it!” they yell, dropping their sleeping bags in the front hallway, then flopping on the couch.
But the long trip from the car to the house will be worth it. Because when enough 15-year-olds get together, something exciting is bound to happen.
Gossip.
Biting sarcasm.
Innuendo.
More gossip.
All the things that make summer great.
“How many kids are in our house?” I ask my wife as we hide in a bedroom.
“Only about 600,” she says.
“Sounds like more,” I say.
Then there is a loud shriek, the kind of shriek you hear when someone is thrown in the pool.
“I guess someone got thrown in the pool,” I say.
“We don’t have a pool,” my wife says.
“At least we have the shrieks,” I say.
Then the doorbell rings, and more girls show up, and everybody talks all at once, the way teenage girls do, louder and louder as the night goes on, all struggling to be heard above the roar.
Then the doorbell rings and pizza arrives. And the phone rings and more pizza arrives.
And that’s when summer will officially start, in mid-August, when enough people have nothing to do that they make something happen. An end-of-summer slumber-party solstice.
“Let’s order more pizza,” one of them will yell.
“OK,” a friend will answer, picking up the phone.
No one will sleep at this sleepover. No one ever sleeps at a sleepover. Not kids, not parents, not pets. Once, a kid tried to sleep during a sleepover. She was never invited back.
So they’ll talk about their summers and the vacations they took and how embarrassing their dads look in their bathing suits--like he’s a few months pregnant, but healthy and happy and always glad to find a chair.
But mostly, my daughter and her friends will talk about how it has all zoomed by. June. July. August. Three months that suddenly seem like three minutes.
“I love summer,” one finally says.
“We go back in two weeks.”
“Don’t mention school.”
“School.”
“I said don’t mention it.”
“We just got out.”
“Yeah, we just got out of school.”
“Don’t mention school.”
“I love summer.”
“Me too.”
“I love summer too.”
* Chris Erskine’s regular column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.
