Growing Up In Summer - A Memoir of Bo Sanders

Summers were boring for me growing up. My siblings and I, Cynthia and Jonathan, had the privilege of being born into a family with lots of money. Therefore, we had a big house. A big backyard. Plenty of things to do. But we could never do the things we wanted to do. Our parents wanted us to follow in their footsteps. As disgustingly cliche as that is. I was a rebellious child, so I got in an awful lot of trouble. My teachers always told my parents that I was an angel, a great kid in class. That’s because I was. I was perfect in front of my teachers and peers. But if you asked my parents, they’d say I was the most annoying little kid. Jon was their favorite. He was the youngest, the little baby, the perfect child. Cindy tried, but she wasn’t perfect. She deserved so much more from our parents. I wish she knew that.

I was born in 1956, meaning the first summer I remember wasn’t until 1962, when I was 6. Jonathan had just turned 3 and Cynthia was 5. Little Jon was sick that summer, so Cindy and I were hardly ever around him. Not that we wanted to be. He was whiny and, well, a toddler. I remember trying to climb a tree for the first time that summer. Our parents never let us. But Father was at work and Mother was busy with Jon. So no one was around to stop me. Naturally, I almost killed myself, had Cynthia not broken my fall. I broke her arm and sprained my ankle. After that, I didn’t climb any trees for years. Mother and Father wouldn’t let me near them.

In 1966, my mother signed me and Cynthia up for horse riding lessons. Cindy picked it up really quick (she was born to be a horse girl,) but I struggled. I didn’t trust the horses and they wouldn’t trust me. That following school year, I returned with bruises and plenty of stories of broken bones. Jonathan was allowed to play sports, but only golf and croquet. Anything else was too violent or too dirty. He decided on golf. He would say it was because “croquet is golf for people with patience, and patience is for losers.” He was an angry boy growing up. And now, 28 and still living with our parents, I’m sure he’s angrier than ever.

When I was 14, I met a boy who lived not too far from us. His name was Levi. Everyone told me it was short for something but I didn’t care. I was in love with him. We would hold hands, have picnics, be cheesy and disgusting and happy. That was, until I met his sister, Elaine. That was the first summer I fell in love, and the summer I learned I liked boys and girls. I told my parents and they sent me to a conversion camp. That was undoubtedly the worst summer of my life. I was made to memorize the whole bible, inside and out. I didn’t memorize it, but I do know an awful lot. More than I’d like to admit.

1972, Jonathan, Cynthia, and I were 13, 15, and 16 respectively. Cindy and I were trying to convince Jon that he was adopted. He believed it until a week before school started, when he told our parents, “If you’re not my real Mother and Father, you can’t make me go to school!” Needless to say, my sister and I weren’t allowed to leave our rooms for the rest of the summer. We did, of course. We’d sneak out of our windows and hang out on the roof together. There were so many things about my

 sister that I didn’t know until that summer. I’d give anything to be back on that roof with her, sitting in the sun and talking about the most meaningless things.

The last summer I remember was the one where I was grounded the whole summer. I refused to apply for a college, so my parents shoved me in my room with a handful of pamphlets and let me out for mealtimes and scheduled bathroom breaks. I would sneak out through my window and go down to the poorer parts of town, where I found the kind of people that really appreciate life, because they don’t know how long they have. And no. I was not the rich kid that donated to these “poor lost souls” and “helped the less fortunate” and blah-blah-blah white savior. If anything, they helped me. My closest friend, Victor, helped me move out of my parents’ house.

The first summer we lived together, I was 19. I was fresh out of my first year at a community college (I wanted to go right out of high school, but was too stubborn to give my parents what they wanted,) and had nothing to do but trail behind Victor. Separately, we were a science nerd and a high school janitor. But together, we were thieves. Petty thieves, but thieves nonetheless. We were closer than I’d ever been to anyone in my life.

The summer I turned 22 was the summer I received the most devastating news of my whole life. A fancy letter showed up to our at above a crappy Chinese place, and I immediately recognized my mother’s handwriting. I didn’t know how she found me. But I was curious to see what was inside. I opened the envelope to find a lengthy, handwritten letter from my mom about how she and my father miss me, and they want me to come back. Then they dropped the news like an atomic bomb.

Cynthia had killed herself.

After that, I stopped celebrating summer. Eventually, Victor and I went our separate ways. And everytime the days started getting hotter, the trees came back to life, and children began playing outside, I’d hole-up somewhere like a weird reverse hibernation. Summers as a kid sucked. But growing up made them a whole lot worse.