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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Make a splash

Start planning for the best summer of your life

Make a splash. (Molly Quinn / mollyq@spokesman.com)
The Spokesman-Review

Let’s say you want this to be your best summer ever.

Can you actually make that happen? Or do we all just have to sit back and count on luck?

There are differing schools of thought. But with Memorial Day weekend having arrived, it probably can’t hurt to start coming up with a game plan.

How do you guarantee a great summer?

Maybe it would be a good idea to hear from people who know how to have fun. So here is some advice from three Spokane Valley 8-year-olds.

How would you make sure to have the best summer ever?

“I would go to Silverwood,” said Isaiah Guillen.

Mason Leisenring, on the other hand, said the secret is “100 percent swimming.”

Chloe Peck took an introspective approach and asked herself what would make her summer special.

The answer? “Meeting my Prince Charming.”

Yes, that might make it a season to remember. Especially for a second-grader.

But what if your goals are, well, a bit more modest?

“My advice for the perfect summer would be to get back to the basics – whatever ‘the basics’ means to you,” said Lawrence Killingsworth, a senior executive at a large Spokane medical laboratory.

“I couldn’t say it better than Clark Gable did to Marilyn Monroe in ‘The Misfits’: ‘What do we do out here? We stay up late, get up whenever we want to, fry a couple of eggs, throw rocks at a can, whistle…’ ”

Of course, perhaps it’s easy to be philosophical if you own a beautiful sailboat, as Killingsworth does.

Still, the idea of throwing rocks with Marilyn Monroe does have a certain appeal.

Maybe the key is to zero in on pursuits that you know to be fun while avoiding, to the extent possible, seasonal buzzkills.

Coeur d’Alene lawyer Alyssa Swartz had specific advice.

1. “Go to Boy Scout camp.”

2. “Don’t worry about yard work.”

That could be a fine start. Unless, that is, you actually enjoy yard work.

Someone aiming to have a four-star summer faces a choice. Do you focus on activities or concentrate instead on attitude?

Either way, you probably need to hold open the door for serendipity.

“The ‘best summer ever’ will probably not be the one you planned,” said Hans Bynagle, professor and library director at Whitworth University. “But here’s a scheme for a really good one, if you’re able to do this and assuming you’re from around Spokane.

“Early to mid-summer, take a trip, whether far or near, that lets you enjoy intensely sights and experiences you can’t get in or near Spokane – until you’re pretty much satiated.

“Come home at that point to enjoy that ‘glad to be home’ feeling and to relish everything that’s so great about Inland Northwest summers.”

Hmmm. Didn’t Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” say something about there being no place like home? And let’s not forget that she lived in high-risk tornado country.

For Sue Chapin, board president for Spokane Public Schools, there are three magic words: the Oregon Coast.

“Stand on the beach, listen to the waves, and look up into the billions of stars in the night sky,” she said.

Spokane insurance sales executive Curt Olsen said the best ideas for summer plans often come from friends.

“Get suggestions on what to do, when to go, what to bring,” he said. “Then, once you go, explore. Take the detour, try that hike, taste the specialty. Plan and then be spontaneous.”

Oh, and one more thing: “Take your GPS.”

It’s easy enough to see why someone would issue a bold pronouncement about a desire to make this a bell-ringing summer. Sometimes the seasons seem to slip by so fast you look around in a daze and wonder who hit the fast-forward button on the calendar.

Declaring an intention to make it a summer for the ages can be an attempt to slow things down and savor moments as they happen.

Sadly, though, wishing doesn’t make it so.

“If you say you are going to have the best summer, you set yourself up for disappointment,” said Carol Nelson, a North Idaho school teacher. “You can look back and say that it was the best summer ever but I don’t think you can plan for it.”

Still, that doesn’t mean there’s no chance you will meet your Prince Charming.

It’s just that, meantime, it might be a good idea to also plan on going swimming or heading over to Silverwood.