It’s Summer, What Are You Going to Do About It?

Summer.  For a dad looking back at his childhood, it’s hard to distinguish one summer from another.  The memories run together to form a confluence of irresponsibility, amusement, awakening and mischief that often mark the most treasured years of our youth.

For those dads managing to balance work, family and their own personal diversions, summer may have lost a little bit of its bad boy image. It’s sort of like seeing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson appearing in the movie Tooth Fairy.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

My summer routine begins with a simple tradition of taking a day off from work to be at my kids' school when they are let out for summer. If you have not experienced this as a dad, check out the raw footage in the video clip from this year’s jubilee.

Can you feel that? The energy, the ballistic joy expressed by your kids. Just because you’re a dad in the real world now doesn’t mean you can’t bring a little bit of yourself back into their world. Drop it down a couple of notches, let go of some of your edges and find a way to create memories for yourself with your family that resemble the experiences you thought you were supposed to leave behind.

Over the course of this summer, I intend to share a few of those activities, events and places that work to combine for a new confluence of irresponsibility, amusement, awakening and even mischief that can make these summers the ones you look back on and long for.

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