Summer Has Changed Since I was Young

If you grew up on the edge of suburbia/rural America as I did, summer went by in a hot, happy blur of outdoor play, lying indoors reading, drinking tea, and leaning off the back porch eating juicy peaches and watermelon. Evidently kids don't do such things anymore. According to the National Institute for Summer Learning (warning: sales pitch for structured summer activities for kids), kids gain three times as much weight during the summer as they do during the school year, because so many sit at home alone all day eating and playing video games indoors instead of running around outside. How sad is that?

I can say as a caveat to the statistics they provide, that I grew a LOT the summer after my seventh grade year- an inch a month for three or four months. I ate massive amounts of food. My BMI probably changed pretty dramatically- though I was a severely skinny child, anyway. I could eat an entire medium pizza alone, and not look like I had eaten anything, like the skinny cows in Pharaoh's nightmare. I just got taller. I still get accused of having an eating disorder, even though I have a healthy weight. So, "kids gain a lot of weight in the summer" might just mean they are growing- or might not. It just might mean somebody needs to kick them out in  the yard, or take them to a park, or leave them with someone who can- which is where those summer programs have their place. I'm going out to run around in the yard now.