Open for Business

What happens when there’s no TV and the trampoline is no longer such a novelty and the one tennis ball you found in the yard is now stuck in the bushes where you can’t crawl in and get it because there are things in there and you are afraid to go down and play in the creek until Dad buys you a pair of galoshes to keep the leeches off your legs?

Ask, no, beg Mom to let you open The Trunk and do some schoolwork. Get excited when you discover Mom has packed three copies of Harvey’s English Grammar so that everyone has their own copy just like in a real class. Have fun organizing all the books by subject on the little built-in shelves in the living room. Try to decide which you should read first, The Iliad or The Odyssey. Do your math and then play school with your littlest sister, teaching her a few math lessons of her own. Get your sisters together for an afternoon of sketching with all your new art supplies. Then shock your parents a second day in a row by pulling the books out again and competing to see who gets to do math with Mom first.

Nothing is stronger than habit.

-- Ovid