My Summer Off, personal essay

Memory can be so fickle. Like some great book that is slowly loosing its pages, you begin with an entire novel full of details and descriptions and, if you're not careful, you end up with nothing more than the cover and the brief synopsis on the back page. My novel on the subject of the end of summer school debate has lost its share of pages but the back-cover synopsis, the essence of the entire experience, is still with me.
"We are about to begin our annual debating tournament," the instructor beamed with an enthusiasm that let each of us know how happy he was that we had made it this…