The Summer We Were Sixteen: Part IV - Ozz

In Australia, summer is Dec-Feb, so my 16th birthday was right before the end of the school year. I remember it clearly because as a 10th grade Elective PE student I had the opportunity to be part of the 7th grade swimming lessons program which lasted a week. Being one of the top swimmers I was assigned with the advanced class which had my sister in it. Bad idea, we get along WAY too well. All week we goofed off during the lessons.
The last day of the lessons was a pool party and my birthday. One of my best friends at the time gave me a stuffed toy sheep with a bib which read: Best Friends. It was possibly the coolest gift ever because I have a weird sheep fetish.
The whole day was a blast, and I ended up sun burnt. So my sixteenth birthday party that night I was as red as a lobster. But a few weeks later I had a nice bronze tan and my hair was sun-bleached.
Like most summers, I spent it at the pool or beach, but that year we had really bad fires around and after Christmas. We lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and that area is a tinderbox. When fire season kicks in, the smell of smoke lingers for weeks. But that year was really bad. Before Christmas almost an entire neighborhood was lost, leaving them stranded for Christmas.
By mid-January, a 30km front was heading straight for the line of towns in which we lived. So a burn off was set into place in the bush which our home fronted. I remember we had to take the dogs inside and lock them up because they freaked out, and wildlife slithered and scampered up into the streets as we watch the firefighters set our bush on fire.
It did the trick though. The fire had nothing to burn, so when it met with the burn off, it went out or changed course away from all the homes. I remember at night going to a lookout and seeing the orange glow crawling down the mountainside like a slow lava flow. It felt so eerie.
A few days later, Dad decided he wanted to go take a look at "our" bush. So we hiked down to a small creek with the dogs. On the way back, I slipped on some ash, and underneath embers still smoldered. It stung like crazy, and I obviously cried and the dogs rushed over to lick my face in their dog-sympathy kind of way.
We rushed home to hose my leg off and found a nice burn from my knee down my shin. To this day I still have a small amount of ash trapped under my skin on my knee.
So, that was my summer when I was sixteen.

~Ozz

The Summers We Were Sixteen: Part II

Didn't you just love Rogue's post about her 16th summer? The fact that she used the word temerity alone, really impressed me. So much so, that I had to look it up. For your enjoyment, here is an account of Lady Jane's summer she turned 16, exactly 14 years ago today!


Lady

Sunday! My 16th birthday fell on a Sunday. And I thought the universe couldn't be crueler. I couldn't date until I turned sixteen anyway and it was just the shard of glass on top of the cake that it fell on a Sunday, a day my family went to church and not much else. 

The only glorious gift given to me by the universe was that it rained. A good, long rain. I grew up in the desert and the simple act of condensation falling to the ground lifted my spirits. 

I didn't even have the fortune of looking forward to getting my driver's license either. There's no one to blame but myself (or maybe the girl that caused a car accident I was in just before my 15th birthday). I wasn't in the mood to be behind the wheel when there were crazies out there who could run red lights because they felt like it. Not exactly the boost of confidence I needed or faith in my fellow driver.

I had a few close friends that I made from being in choir at high school for the last couple of years that I wanted to invite over for my sweet sixteen. I might have been a little over-zealous at my definition of "a few close friends" because when I invited 20 or so kids, only four showed up. I was too depressed to even be happy that those four cared enough to be there for me. 

When I did finally have my first date, I had a blast! I went with a boy I was friends with (no romantic inklings whatsoever, the best kind of date when you're starting out) and we grabbed some pizza with two other couples and went back to my date's house to play relay ping pong. I think that's what it's called, where you race around the table and you can only hit the ball once. Then we finished the night off with a showing of "The Princess Bride". In all, not a shabby first date if I do say so. 


Stay tuned for our next installment of The Summers We Were Sixteen!