Forget your stupid little Wii games and your World of Warcraft and your boogie boards and your iPods and all that what-have-you. You want excitement? Be 8 or under …in the woods, by water, with two new friends… pull a twig off a cedar and, on the count of OneTwoThree, scream GO!! …and fling it upstream, off a little wooden farm bridge. Then race to the other side of the bridge …and drop in unison onto your bellies… and the three of you hang your heads under the roadway to watch, upside down, while all the leaves bob on the water til the current takes them. When it does, at the top of your lungs, yell I’m winning!! I’m winning!! even if you’re not… because during the month of August, leaves adrift pick up speed in the presence of soundwaves. This is a known fact. Squeal when your little sister’s creased blackberry leaf inches up to and past your friend’s stalk of golden-rod…and groan so the second balcony can hear you when your maple-nose turns lazy in the water and hangs up on a cedar snag. Jump up and down and make the bridge shiver like a plucked string when the leaves set adrift by the other two kids collide and drift off into a bankside eddy. …Inspire your Aunt Margaret to tell you to stop… but also to laugh and not really mean it… An hour or two of that, mister, will exhaust you — happily. You might then come back in… dragging your sandy feet across my clean kitchen floor …and have a bit of homemade raspberry icecream to recharge your summer batteries.