A Summer Full Of Weeks

Was I the only one who completely geeked out (and don't tell me, because I know that I am the only one who completely geeked out) on 'Weekly Reader' day? I loved 'Weekly Reader' day! Nothing made a school day brighter than filing into that bleak little concrete square of a schoolroom and seeing a fresh new pile of 'Weekly Readers' just sitting on the corner of the teacher's desk all shrink-wrapped and ready to inform and entertain. I was not the kid who would raise his hand and remind the teacher that she had forgotten to give out homework that day but I was the kid who would stay pinned in his desk until the 'Weekly Readers' were handed out... recess bell be damned!

And as true and eternal as my love for 'Weekly Reader' was there was one thing that was even better... 'Summer Weekly Reader!' Don't tell me because I don't want to know... was I the only kid to whom summer meant just two thing- amusement parks and 'Summer Weekly Reader?' I know I was more often than not the only kid in my class who admitted to subscribing to 'Summer Weekly Reader' on a yearly basis. I don't care if it did seem to others as if 'Summer Weekly Reader' would bring along with it the slightest taint of chalk dust and book-learning to blight a summer that was meant to pass with as few school-based thoughts as possible... I loved this Saturday morning infused cousin of the slightly more somber 'Weekly Reader.' I loved it so much that I saved onto my copies for over thirty years. Am I the only one who geeked out over 'Summer Weekly Reader' so severely that he still has them in his possession three decades after they first showed up in his mailbox?

Don't tell me... I don't want to know!