Everybody's screwing off for the last few hours of the school year.

Your teacher's sitting there and smoking a cigarette.

She's pissed off. She's gonna lose the paycheck for the next three months.

"Yeah, I hope you little assholes have a good vacation!"

"Now I have to supplement my income by being a waitress at a goddamn Applebee's all summer long."

But you didn't care about her problems.

All you cared about was freedom.

"Oh my God! We're gonna do so much stuff!"

"Think about all the stuff that we're gonna do!"

I got a huge list of stuff and things that we're gonna do all summer long.

And at the start of your summer vacation, it's pretty sweet.

You're throwing your vortex footballs around and drinking your Capri Suns,

but then like three days go by, all of a sudden, you're bored as hell!

You did all that stuff that you had planned!

And you did all the things as well.

Now you don't know what to do with yourself.

You're just standing there in your front yard, staring at each other.

The hot-ass summer sun's burning your pale skin.

"Jesus Christ, Michael, I am so sick of looking at your stupid fucking face, you know that?"

"With your dumb haircut and your stupid Scotty Pippen jersey!"

"We're done playing all your Nintendo games."

"And we broke all your wrestling action figures, so now what the hell are we supposed to do?"

So you get a little desperate. You start making up games to play.

And the games, they aren't even really games.

It's just things that you throw together, off the cuff.

There's not even a point to them.

"Hey, you guys wanna play 'dodge the cars on the busy intersection'?"

"Yeah, okay, let's do it!"

Just games that were a little dangerous, you know, games you couldn't win, but you could sure as shit lose, that's for sure.

"Alright, Tommy, we're gonna see how many times you can hit that beehive over there with this hockey stick."

"Let's see if you can break the record. The record is...zero!"

"Alright, you ready?"

"Okay, let's do it!"

"Ah, man, he's like Macaulay Culkin in My Girl!"

"His glasses—he can't see without his glasses!"

Sometimes we'd go out and we'd play in the rain.

That was an activity to us, something that we looked forward to doing.

"Ah, sweet, it's raining!"

"Let's go get our swimsuits on and see how sick we can get!"

"I bet I can get sicker than you!"

"You're on!"

David's already got his shirt off.

Michael's somewhere drinking out of the gutter.

Michael was a weird kid.

He'd do this thing where he'd collect water in a garbage can lid.

And he'd just dump it all over himself.

"It's a waterfall!"

"Michael, you sick animal, what are you doing?"

"You're gonna get typhus, or some shit!"

"You backwards idiot, what the hell is the matter with you?"

There'd be like a tornado warning on TV.

Somebody's parents would be like: "Hey, you guys being careful out there?"

"Yeah, we're being careful!"

Sometimes, when it was raining really hard, we would play a game called "twister."

No, not the game with the spinner and the dots!

That your uncle would try to make you play naked, not that one!

Twister, like the movie, 1996. Bill Paxton, God rest his soul, did some of his worst acting ever.

"Oh no, Helen Hunt, it's an F5 tornado. I'm super scared right now."

We'd all fight over what characters we were gonna be.

"I'm gonna be Bill Paxton!"

"Well, shit, okay, I'm gonna be Philip Seymour Hoffman then."

"Well, who the hell am I supposed to be now?"

"I don't know, Michael, I guess you're Helen Hunt, okay? Sorry, you are a girl."

"Go put a mop on your head or some shit. I could really give a shit."

"Oh, hell no, I'm not being a girl. How about I be..."

"The cow that gets sucked up by the tornado?"

"A cow? You're gonna be a cow, Michael? Are you serious?"

"Michael, you're not being a fucking cow, alright?"

"Alright, I guess I'll be..."

"the tornado!"

"How the hell are you gonna be a tornado, Michael, you serious?"

"You know what, to hell with it, be the tornado. I could care less."

In this movie, they would chase tornadoes around in a convoy of vans,

but since we were children, we didn't have a convoy of vans.

We had to use a wagon.

And we don't have any tornadoes to chase.

So we had to use...

Well, we used Michael!

"I am a tornado!"

"What the hell is that? What are you doing?"

"Is that what a tornado sounds like to you?"

"I am an F5 tornado!"

Our parents would be watching us from the window, wondering where the hell they went wrong with raising us.

"I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna suck you silly!"

We'd just run around the neighborhood like a bunch of drunken idiots.

You'd come back in your house late at night, sopping wet.

"Jesus Christ, you look like a soggy turd, you know that?"

"Did you have fun out there?"

"Uh...well...almost some, I guess."

You go to your friend's house the next day. Their parents answer the door.

"Can Michael come out and play?"

"No, he caught pneumonia last night. He's dead. Thanks a lot!"

And that was summer vacation.

Sometimes you got hurt.

Sometimes you ended up dead.

You're back to school in the fall.

And the teacher is asking everybody if they had a good summer.

"Yeah, we went to Mount Rushmore, and we got a puppy!"

I'm over there. I got my arm in a sling with a black eye, looking like Mankind after a Hell in a Cell match.

"Well, for my summer, let's see...I got hit by a Volkswagen."

"I got stung 47 times by a bunch of bees."

"And three of my friends died from exposure."

"So no, not quite as good as Mrs. Mount Rushmore Puppy's over there."