all-encompassingly

today i drove past wasatch elementary school where a sign reads “have an awesome summer.” i thought it was a little odd.

in the grown up world, it doesn’t seem appropriate to use the word, “awesome” on a sign.

remember the sign at your school during summer vacation? if your school was anything like mine, the sign said something more subdued…like, “have a nice summer.” if the administration was really cool, they might have said, “have a great summer.” but i never really felt like they understood how the students felt about summer vacation, what with such restrained messages concerning it. it was just another thing about us that they didn’t understand.

they didn’t understand that “nice” or even “great” is not how a kid would describe the summer break! he was just released from school for the whole summer! when you’re 8 or whatever, that’s “awesome!.”

i am glad that this change in school-sign language has occured in at least one place, and i hope passionate words, such as awesome, will continue to grace grade-school marquees across the nation. in a way it is vindication, telling me i wasn’t an overzealous summerer as a youth.

and perhaps, more broadly, the wasatch elementary sign and its child-friendly word-choice will signal a new era of inter-generational understanding in america.