Hidemi's Rambling No.214

The most troublesome homework for the summer break in elementary school was a picture diary. It was a big blank book in which you would draw and write about what happened each day, along with the day’s weather. Because I held off on my entire homework as a lazy student, the last day of the break would become a shambles involving my parents every year. While I was doing other pieces of homework sobbing from regret and their rebuke, they were tackling the picture diary by forging happenings and making sentences. But the thing was the required daily weather. There wasn’t the Internet yet at the time and the weather record of the past 40 days depended on my father’s memory. My mother drew pictures and I wrote down the stories my parents told me. My picture diary was evidently written by a grown-up with peculiarly well-drawn pictures and mature sentences. Of course, the total amount of homework was too huge to be done in one day even by three people, and I would submit only part of it on the first day of the second term. When asked by the teacher for the rest of it, my excuse was always ‘I’ve done it, but somehow, I forgot to bring it.’ The first couple of days of the second term would be spent likewise. Although my parents made me promise that it would never happen again, I repeated it every summer break…