“July 15th – The most perfect day of the year!” I shouted as the morning sunshine streamed through my window. I struggled to my feet, put on my bathrobe, and walked over to the open window. After inhaling all the precious, sweet fresh air my lungs could possibly contain, I exhaled through pierced lips. “What a wonderful day!” I exclaimed, to no one in particular.
You may ask me, “What makes July 15th so great?” Well, I’ll tell you. But first, since we’ve not been properly introduced, let me take the lead. I’m Winner Winterbargen, and I am thirteen years old. That makes me old enough to explore all the interesting places in my small Indiana town, but not old enough to get a summer job. Don’t get me wrong; not working is just fine with me.
Now back to July 15th. This date on the calendar falls exactly between May 31, the last day of school this spring, and September 1st, the first day of school this fall. School is never further away than it is today. Yes, July 15th is the exact middle of the best thing man has ever created; Summer Vacation. Yeah, I know all about Christmas vacation and Spring Break, but nothing is better than June, July, and August: Summer Vacation.
Each day during Summer Vacation you can get up whenever you want, eat cold, leftover pizza, and goof off around the house until your mom says, “Why don’t you go outside for a while?” That, my friend, is the invitation to all sorts of opportunities and adventures. You can ride your bike all over town, play ball behind Riley’s old red barn, drink mugs of ice-cold root beer at A&W, explore spooky houses on the edge of town, and do just about anything because you are FREE. After all, that’s what summer vacation is all about: Being FREE.
Unfortunately, sometimes parents forget this. Sometimes parents think summer vacation is a time for them to get work done around the house for free. Sometimes parents – – – well, let me tell you about yesterday.
July 14th started just like today. I got up, opened my window, took a big gasp of fresh summer morning air, and decided I should call Alison. It was the perfect day to ride our bikes to Nelson Park and try out the new rollerblade path the park district just finished. As I reached for the phone on my dresser, my morning peace was shattered, as were my plans for the day.
“Winnifred, are you still in bed? Breakfast is ready, and so are your chores.” My mom always calls me ‘Winnifred’, even though everyone else calls me ‘Winner’, the nickname Dad gave me. I hate ‘Winnifred’.
“Aw, Mom, I wanted to go rollerblading today with Alison. Do I hafta-”
“Yes, Winnifred, and hurry down here. All those lovely dandelions are waiting.”
“Okay, Mom, I’ll be down in a bit,” I answered, then groaned. I forgot that last night I was given the ‘opportunity’ to rid our front yard of all the yellow-topped invaders this morning.
Now, most people I know either spray a weed killer on their grass or hire someone with a big truck to come and spray the yard to kill the weeds, including dandelions. But not my parents. You see, Dad is into ‘environmentally friendly’ yard care, which means I ‘get’ to dig each weed out by hand.
I open my closet door and dug into the back of the closet. There I found my blue jeans overalls, an old t-shirt from gym class last year, and a pair of old gym shoes. I got dressed and wandered towards the steps. When I arrived downstairs and sat down, I realized my plate was the only one left on the table. After taking all the time humanly possible to eat two pancakes and a couple of sausage links, I sighed and headed toward the back door.
“And don’t forget, Winnifred, collect all the dandelions and put them in the large paper leaf bags. You will find the bags in the garage, along with the dandelion digger.”
I nodded my understanding and went out the door. On my way to the garage, I couldn’t help stopping by the frog pond we just dug this spring. Dad thought it would be a great idea to have a pond so we could attract interesting wildlife. He took a week’s worth of vacation days to supervise the digging and installation of the two-foot-deep pond. He surrounded the fifteen-foot by twenty-foot pond with hundreds of lily pads and long cattails. Within just a few days several frogs found their way to their new home in our backyard. The dirt from digging the hole for the pond was used to form a little hill, on which Dad built a canopy swing. Almost every evening Dad and Mom sit out there listening to the frogs and looking dreamy-eyed at one another. Sometimes I think they believe they’re teenagers again.
I stood quietly about three feet away from the water’s edge and listened to the frogs croaking out calls one to another across the pond and in the trees just beyond. I sighed and complained aloud, “What a life! A frog gets to do whatever he wants all day long. He can lounge on a lily pad and ‘Ribbit’ to his friends. He can jump in the pond and swim all around. And if he’s hungry, all he has to do is sit perfectly still until a fat juicy bug flies by within his tongue’s reach and ‘Gulp’, breakfast is served.”
Suddenly I heard a very, very deep ‘ribbit’ just to my right. Dad told me that a giant bullfrog had found his way to the pond sometime last weekend, but no one but Dad had seen it. “That must be the new big bullfrog,” I barely whispered out loud. “I wonder where he is.”
I edged closer to the water, looking all along the bank of the pond for any sign of Mr. Bullfrog. I was sure he was only about 5 feet away from me, but I couldn’t see him yet. I moved another step nearer without taking my eyes off the spot where I was sure he was hiding. As I set my right foot down, it slipped on the muddy bank, and before I knew what was happening, both my feet were at the bottom of the pond and I was sitting on the muddy shore. I barely regained my balance in time to keep from falling totally into the pond.
“How could I be so clumsy?” I cried aloud. The only answer to my question was the chorus of croaks coming from all around me. The only voice missing was that of the giant bullfrog.
I managed to get my feet out of the water without further damage, stood up, and headed again for the garage. As I walked, I heard that squeaking sound that wet shoes make as water squishes between your toes. I hate that sound.
I opened the side door to the garage and smelled the musty, stale air that had been trapped in the garage. Just inside the door, a huge spider web stretched from one wall to another. “Yuk, I hate spiders and spider webs!” I reached into the garage, grabbed a short-handled broom, and was just about to knock the web down when I noticed the creator of this natural masterpiece in the upper right corner of the web. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and suddenly I couldn’t move my arms. “Okay, Miss Spider, I won’t destroy your work. I suppose you are waiting for the flies that escape the frogs in the pond. I wouldn’t want to ruin your lunch plans.”
“Winnifred, where are you?” Mom called from the back door.
“Right here, Mom, getting my stuff outta the garage.”
I bent down, walked under the web, and turned to the left to find the dandelion digger. On the farall, hung on a pegboard, was the chosen weapon. The digger was a long metal thing, with a wooden handle on one end, and a sharp blade on the other, with a “V”, cut into it. I took it off the hook, grabbed a couple of the leaf bags next to it, and headed toward the door. Unfortunately, I forgot about the spider web.
“Oh, YUK!” I shouted. “I can’t believe I’m so dumb! How could I forget about the spider web?” I ran to the back of the house to wash the sticky web off my arms with the hose. I turned on the water before grabbing the hose nozzle and was immediately showered by the sprinkler attachment, which someone left on the end of the hose. Before I could turn the water off, I got totally soaked.
I took a deep breath, somehow managed not to say what I wanted to say, and exhaled slowly. Trying to stay optimistic, I turned skyward and said, “Well, at least the sun will dry me off soon.” I no sooner closed my mouth when a cloud blocked the sun’s rays. “Well, so much for that idea,” I muttered as I wiped the water droplets from my forehead.
“Winnifred, are you using the hose?”
“I was, Mom, but not now.”
I shivered from the unexpected shower but picked up my digger and the bags and headed around the house toward the front yard. “Dandelions, you better look out. I’ve had enough already today. Your days, my yellow-topped friends, are numbered.” I put the digger on my shoulder, like a rifle, and marched around the house.
Between me and those nasty, ill-fated weeds stood my maple tree. I call it ‘my maple tree’ because Dad planted it the same day I was born. I guess we kind of grew up together. I marched straight ahead, right under the branches of the maple, like I usually do, without worrying about hitting my head. You see, Dad always keeps the maple trimmed high enough so I can walk under the branches with ease. However, on this fine July day, I was pretending to be a soldier, with my ‘rifle’ on my shoulder. The digger got stuck on a branch and slipped off my shoulder. I turned around to grab it just as it swung back toward me. “Whack!” The wooded handle hit me squarely on the forehead. I spun halfway around, wobbled for a second, and fell directly on my back. I touched my forehead, expecting to find blood. There was no blood, but a bump was starting to rise.
As I lay on the grass, I heard my mom calling from the front porch, “Winnifred, where are you?”
Without moving, I called back to her, “Over here, under the tree.” My head began to ache. Suddenly I realized I shouldn’t have spoken so loudly.
“You better get to the dandelions soon, young lady.”
I struggled to get up, but I couldn’t. The ground kept spinning around and around. After a minute or two things got better, so I stood up wobbly and staggered to the front of the house.
Our front yard is a hill that runs down to the street. That’s why I call it “Dandelion Hill.” I threw the bags down to the bottom of the hill and stuck the digger into the ground at the base of the first ‘casualty’ of the battle.
“Why, Winnifred, what happened to you?” Mom asked from the porch. “You’re a wreck!”
She surveyed me from one end to the other. My shoes were soaked and muddy. My overalls were wet. My t-shirt was dirty. My hair was matted and snarled. To top it off, the bump on my forehead was still rising. “I thought you were just getting the tools.”
“So did I, Mom, so did I.”
As she came down the steps I told her about the pond, the spider web, the hose, and the maple tree. By the time I finished, she was laughing out loud at me. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t. For several minutes neither of us could stop laughing. Then Mom joined me in the battle. Soon both of us were digging out the dandelions and ‘popping’ off their heads with our thumbs. Before long we finished digging out the weeds and won the ‘Battle of Dandelion Hill.’
Mom sat down next to the full leaf bag, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and let out a big sigh. “That was a lot of work, but fun, too. Why don’t we go inside, get cleaned up, and go get some pizza for lunch? Then maybe we’ll try out the rollerblade path together. What do you say, Winner?”
I smiled at her, nodded, and headed for the house. Sometimes, I guess, even parents understand what summer vacation is about after all.
Christian Fiction by Bill Shaul 
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