After a solid week of obsessing over whether or not my heart is beating normally (it is), I am finally past all that and thinkging good thoughts. I do the health obsession thing about once a month or so. Before the heart beat was the skin cancer thing. Anyway….So I am working and listening to the Footloose soundtrack. I watched the old movie recently and it brings back good memories of my childhood. I was about 11 when that movie came out. That summer was one of the best I can remember from my childhood. My parents had gotten divorced and my mother was not around. My dad worked a lot of overtime and I had three months of freedom. My best friend lived close by and from around 7 AM until 9 PM when the pool closedwe were outside. I got the best tan of my life that summer. I grew a lot, too.I would start my day out with a bike ride around the neighborhood. I loved those early morning bike rides. Just me and the birds singing- the tranquility!Oh and those flowers that come out only in the morning! Then I would go wake up my best friend. I was tall and thin and she was short and round and everyone called us Laurel & Hardy. That used to make me so mad. We would head to the pool. All the other kids and teenagers in the neighborhood would eventually show up. Sometimes we'd leave the pool and go play in the treehouse we all built in the woods behind where we lived. Sometimes we'd spy on my older brother and his friends. We'd go in and eat dinner and then go right back out. We'd sit outside on the swingset or on the porch steps, listening to musicand talking about boys we liked and who we were going to marry. That was probably the last summer I ever felt like a kid. Do you remember what it felt like to come inside your house when it's finally dark, in the summertime, you're alltired and sweaty and dirty and you feel GOOD. You've got that good "I've been outside all day playing" kind of feeling. Yeah, that was the last summer I felt that way. But I remember it. So many kids these days never play outside. I push mine out the door. It makes me feel good to see that healthy glow in their cheeks and smell that outside smell on them.