What did you do during the summer when you were a kid? Apparently these types of questions are now subjects of studies, complete with proposals for coordinated state responses. Both my parents worked, and I was always put out to others during the summer. My own list as a child included

• YMCA summer camp -- daytime all-day;
• a private day camp;
• a schoolyard program run by the city's parks and rec department;
• one summer where Mom dropped me at the golf course and my bag and eighteen holes watched me.

I'm sure I've forgotten a few, but these were great times. There were also the camps you went to for a week -- church and Boy Scouts, for two -- but these were the special ones you did for a week or two while Mom and Dad did ... well, I now understand.

How is it that we've ended up with so few options for the kids in summer, that we have to have universities study a social problem of idle children?