Cursed Summer

Have I told you about the cursed summer, back when I was a kid?

I swear, that old dingbat of a teacher cursed us! We were acting up as usual, and she slammed one of our textbooks on the table, and there was a flash, and she said some wicked words!

Of course I don’t remember them. It was the last day of school – why would I remember anything? History, Math, Grammar, Witch Hexing, it’s all the same when it’s summer vacay.

But we ran out of there a little faster than normal. I didn’t want to take chances.

It started the next morning.

If it wasn’t a paper cut, it was a stubbed toe. I tripped over invisible bumps in the carpets, and when Dad took a nail gun to the floor, I tripped over invisible dust motes. Every. Day.

And it wasn’t just me. Meeting up with the guys from class, we all all sported bruises and band-aids and scrapes. Craig had a broken arm, and Jake was on crutches.

We tried playing video games. Three broken controllers later, somehow the system completely erased our history. And when we tried to start again from scratch, Derek went downstairs for more snacks and somehow tripped the breaker. Lights out, in just our house.

My parents asked us to eat up all the frozen stuff, so we went for the tubs of ice cream first. How can all of us suddenly be allergic to vanilla, and two instantly turned lactose intolerant, when they weren’t yesterday?

Dad grilled those really good steaks they’d been saving. Mine was burnt, because it was the only one to slip into the coals.

We decided to hang out at the local park instead, but the Mayor changed the signs around, and it was now the dog park. With all sorts of “surprises” waiting for us.

There’s a nice shady spot near the patch of woods, so we thought it would be far enough away to get away from the curse. Frankie said he saw strange lights in there, and ran away, and we haven’t seen him since.

Mark swore he saw a tiger in his back yard, and refused to go outside the rest of the summer.

As soon as Jake got off the crutches, he tripped again – and broke his arm.

Mike got Tennis Elbow from chewing gum.

Jimmy accidentally ripped all the arms off his sister’s plushie millipede, and was grounded for eternity.

Jerry was run over by a rabid circus.

Me? I tried making myself a PB&J, and sliced my finger open on the spoon I was using. Sixty stitches. I wasn’t allowed to use even a butter knife, my Mom had locked them up after the sixth incident of Inappropriate Lunch Making.

Suzie got lost in the kiddie pool. Twice.

Jenny went on vacation with her parents, and got bitten by a sweater.

Even Hermione had some difficulties. Yes, she’s named after the character. She told us, when the phones were working, that the only relief she found was hiding in the library. Reading History, or sometimes Mathematics.

After Keith got abducted by raccoons and returned with a serious craving for dog food, I fled to the library.

No more paper cuts. No more tripping over air molecules.

I told the others, and soon we were all reading quietly in the study room. The librarians, quite suspiciously, would hustle us out the door at closing time.

Lenny got carried off by a pterodactyl when we ran home one night. I knew he was reading comics inside the Encyclopedia Britannica he’d selected.

Finally, when September rolled around, we dragged ourselves into school. She was there, smiling evilly, as we shuffled to our assigned seats.

As she closed the door, there was a flash, and I smelled burning chalk. She glided to the front of the room, picked up a stack of papers, passed them out.

We groaned. Pop quiz. On the first day!

Which we all aced, to our everlasting shock.

She nodded. “Well, then, let’s get started on a new year of learning…”

I never chucked another spitball again. Kenny just sighed, and instead of entertaining himself by throwing pencils at the ceiling, selected one, and took notes.

The cursed summer was over, but the cursed school year had begun.

But that’s another story...