Barefoot

I've always heard that the sense most tied to memory is the sense of smell. But, for me, the thing that will always bring back thoughts of the past is hearing a song. Do you ever hear a song that immediately catapults you into a different time, into a distant memory? I was at work recently when "MMMBop" came on the radio, and I was suddenly back in the summer of '97.

You have so many relationships in this life.

Only one or two will last.

You go through all this pain and strife.

Then you turn your back and they're gone so fast.

When I think of the carefree days of being a kid, summer memories are always the first to pop into my head. I was a child of the '90s, which was easy to see judging by my Spice Girls cassette tape and my pair of pink jelly shoes. Summer mornings were spent sleeping while the afternoons and evenings were for playing outside with friends until the street lights came on. We would spend hours out in the sun every day, running from one house to another house, from one kitchen to another kitchen, until our parents, exasperated with our exorbitant amount of energy, asked us in stern voices, "Inside or outside? We can't air condition the whole neighborhood, girls."

Of course, we would choose outside because there's so much more fun outside. We had bicycles to ride, stories to imagine, and far-off places to explore. "Why would anyone ever choose inside the house?" I used to wonder to myself. Nothing fun happens inside the house. Inside is for baths, homework, and bedtimes. But outside? Outside is for capture the flag, Chinese jump rope, and hide and seek. And with a water hose in the backyard that provided me with unlimited drinking water on those warm summer days, I could stay outside for hours at a time.

We knocked on the doors of friends and asked the mother or father who answered the door, "Can Emily come out and play?" because we didn't have text messaging, email, or instant messenger. We adored our Walkmans because we knew that if they broke, Mom wasn't going to buy us a new one. We recorded our favorite songs from the radio onto cassette tapes since we didn't have the option of downloading music to our MP3 players (which often resulted in the first twenty seconds of the song being filled with the voice of the obnoxious DJ). We giggled like carefree kids as we rolled down hills in our backyards, landing in a heap of grass stains and kool-aid mustaches at the bottom.

We weren't in constant fear of being injured, losing our jobs, or having our hearts broken by people we trusted. Friendships were repaired with a shared popsicle and a pinky promise to never hurt each other's feelings ever again. Our biggest worry was whether or not we had enough change to get a Drumstick when we heard the distant sounds of the ice cream truck. Fear was just another four letter word, and we would often spend most of our days climbing (and falling out of) trees, creating bike ramps that would inevitably break somebody's arm, or challenging each other to playground antics that would rival the stunts on Ninja Warrior.

Everyone always says that you should appreciate being young because it goes by too fast. Where there is a 16-year old girl complaining about her 11:00 curfew, there will always be an adult telling her, "One day, you're going to look back on these days and wish you had appreciated them more." But she won't listen. She'll think to herself, "They don't know what they're talking about." She'll gripe, "They only say that because they're so old now," and laugh about it later with her friends.

And lately, I actually do feel old. My summers used to be devoted to eating frozen popsicles on the hottest days of the year or starting a game of kickball in the street with all the other kids in the neighborhood. My summers used to be about staying barefoot as long as my mom would let me because shoes just got in the way of learning how to ride a bike or chasing the boy I liked across my front lawn.

Now my summers are spent chained to my desk at work, craving the sun on my cheeks and the freckles that always come with it. I stare out my window longingly, remembering the days. The days of Lisa Frank folders and Saved by the Bell marathons.

Mmm bop, ba duba dop,

Ba du bop, ba duba dop,

Ba du bop, ba duba dop,

Ba du

The song comes to an end. The '90s are over, and there is work to be done, a house to be cleaned, and bills to be paid.

But while I'm going through the motions of being an adult, I smile. Because I know that the next time a song from my childhood comes on, I'll get to take my short vacation into the past all over again. So I sigh, turn back to my work, and wait.