This summer, I’m letting my kids be kids. No camps or enriching activities that’ll get them into an Ivy in ten years. No screen time or YouTube or Minecraft. And no fancy family vacation either. Because this summer, my kids are going back to a simpler time. I’m giving them an 1890s summer.
I know most millennials want their kids to relive their 1990s summers, but that won’t cut it, because the 1990s had technology, stranger danger, and Coolio. No, I want to go back even farther, to a decade when parents didn’t put trackers on their children’s phones and women couldn’t vote. I’m bringing back the Gay ’90s summer. (Not the Fire Island kind of gay; the end of the Victorian era kind of gay, when everyone was happy and wasted on absinthe… come to think of it, that actually may be the Fire Island kind too.)
All summer long, my kids will ride their bikes around town. And no Huffy or Schwinn for these modern pansies; they’ll be perched precariously on one of those old-timey bicycles that have one ridiculously huge wheel and one ridiculously small wheel. “You’re hungry?” I’ll say. “Then I guess it’s time to hop on the ol’ penny-farthing and pedal on over to Taco Bell. See you in ten hours, kiddos!”
Just like the 1890s and the 2020s, they’ll play with the unvaccinated kids down the street and drink raw milk until dark. Then at daybreak, I’ll hand my children their metal lunch pails, button their fifty-button shoes, and they’ll shuffle off to their factory jobs, because in the Gilded Age, and southern states in the 2020s, no snowflake child labor laws exist. It’ll be hard on them, sure, but think of how impressive “worked unsupervised with heavy machinery before I entered puberty” will look on their college applications—especially if they lose a finger.
Don’t worry, their summer will also be filled with relaxation. I’m not a monster. That’s why I purchased a gramophone on eBay. The kids can enjoy turn-of-the-century bangers like “Hosanna in the Highest” by the Haydn Quartet and “Down upon the Suwannee River” by Professor Baton’s Brass and String Military Band. Then, after they’ve used the outhouse I installed in the backyard, they’ll sit in the lantern light and discuss current events of the 1890s. “OMG, Kaiser Wilhelm II forced Otto von Bismarck to resign as chancellor of Germany?” they’ll say. “I knew that guy was sus.”
This unsupervised, retro summer I’m giving my children is to protect them from the perils of modern life. But is it also because I need some damn alone time and don’t want to spend $10,000 on summer camp?
Well, as the popular 1890s saying goes, “I’m no lally cooler trying to wake snakes or a nutty foozler, so shut your big bazoo, ya hear.” Which means yes, that’s exactly the reason why.
