Summer Vacations, Carne Asadas And Los Tigres Del Norte

Some things never change — especially in the rewarding field of education. The children I work with now can smell summer right around the corner. They talk about summer blockbusters and which vendors have the best bootlegs. To them, the summer is about staying indoors in the safety of their air conditioned homes to be wired to overpriced wireless devices.

When I was a child, summer vacation meant freedom. It was a special time of the year when I would get up earlier and earlier every morning for no better reason than to become a dumb beast. I would sit there in front of the television with a novelty-sized bowl filled to the brim with sugared wheat disguised as cereal in an attempt to catch up with all the shows I had missed while pursuing an education. Granted, most of it consisted of “The Price is Right” and court shows but they still managed to push out all the long division and cursive writing drills that were rotting inside my brain.

My friends and I would go outside and race the sun. All we needed was fifty cents in order to buy an ice cream and a blind corner so we could release our mother’s imaginary custodial tethers — or at the very least make it seem that the imaginary tethers were attached to something else on the off chance our mothers might have tugged on it. Those were the days where we would go to the park to bother the ducks and watch the city drain the manmade lake because there was a rumored body somewhere deep inside the muck.

Nowadays things are very different.

Those days have been replaced by interactive video games and other distractions that appear as shortcuts to thinking.  I do not feel that these new summers could compare with the summers we had. The hot, sloppy weather would inspire our parents to grill outside in order to mask their alcoholic consumption as the children dragged boomboxes into the backyard and played to the background of our parents perceived memories on the speakers.

There was many a night where my father would listen to Los Tigres del Norte’s hit, “La Jaula De Oro” and blame me for his spiritual downfall. He would swing his fist and decree that I was the reason why he couldn’t go back to his homeland. He would point me out during the part of the song where the father asks the son if he would like to return back to Mexico and the son says the following:

“What are you talking about dad? I don’t want to go back to Mexico… No way dad.”

The adults would laugh. The older kids would wait for them to pass out so that they could sneak beer out of the cooler. The night would continue until the last ember burned out. The most ironic thing is that it also happens to us as we transition into adulthood. Before I realized it, I was doing all of the laughing while guarding the ice chest.

Each of those summer nights was like a Socialist Christmas, in the sense that every day was a gift because it felt like a Saturday. And you can’t put a price tag on that.

Follow Oscar Barajas on Twitter @Oscarcoatl