The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

My all-time favorite commercial is the one from a few years back where a father with an ear-to-ear grin is pushing a shopping cart through a Staples store, gleefully tossing in school supplies as his dejected children follow glumly behind and "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" plays in the background.

"They're going back!" the announcer tells us. Sweeter words were never spoken.

Last May, in the calm quiet of my house before my kids got home from school, I made a stupid decision. I decided my little darlings needed a slacker summer - the kind we had. An unstructured summer spent running through sprinklers, lying in tall grass deflowering dandelions, watching the Road Runner never fail to foil Wile E. Coyote.

I envisioned euphoric days where my children, their imaginations fired by boundless freedom, would write their own plays, rediscover the innocence of youth, perhaps dip into Tolkien or even Tolstoy (it could happen). I wanted them to savor their summer before it slipped away .

That was in May, when I clearly had too much time on my hands and would appear to have been smoking something.

With school out, we went on vacation, enjoying round-the-clock togetherness as we attempted to bolster our family bonds while simultaneously blowing our budget. By the end of the month, our family bond had been bolstered to such an extent that it felt like an iron collar around our necks. My husband, his face wearing the liberated look of an escaped convict, went back to work.

But I, still deeply in a delusional phase, recommitted myself to giving my kids a season of sloth. I was determined that my fantasy of summertime fun and creativity, unencumbered by a schedule, would come to pass. Only it hasn't gone quite as I planned.

Oh, my children have definitely been slothful. They've slept until noon, then stirred themselves just enough to move to the couch, where they somehow have summoned the energy to fight over the TV remote. And they have shown some true creativity there, managing - while still lying down - to punch, kick and bite each other without ever assuming a vertical position. They have read the words on Popsicle wrappers before tossing them on the table.

Fortunately, all this annoying inertia is about to end. And next summer, so help me, they're going to camp.