The boo-yah's of the end of school

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I remember clearly the satellite radio program we were listening to, back when that free trial was making our car rides more exciting.  A fast talking man was the host, and he was telling his loyal listeners about a game that his children play called “Boo-Yah.” 
If you are not familiar with the term “booyah,” you should be.  It’s a great and entertaining word.  Often used as a shout of joy or an in-your-face exclamation, booyah is also a type of soup or stew of presumable Belgian origin that is made throughout the upper Midwestern united states.  Photos of it online make me hungry.
But in this case, the game Boo-Yah (with added hyphen) is a great way to pass the time, especially on road trips. The game goes like this: One person chooses a topic, usually a parent or other responsible person so that the topic has nothing to do with bathrooms.  The topic needs to be something broad enough that everyone can have multiple opinions on it.  For example, potato chips would not make a good topic. There is nothing bad about a potato chip, and anyone that tells you otherwise isn’t trustworthy.
Once a topic is chosen, the first person starts by saying something bad about it. He or she finishes by yelling “boo!!” in an angry voice. The next person in line alternatively says something really great about the topic, and ends with a cheering and positive “yah!!”
And so goes the game, round and round, until you can’t think of any more boo’s or yah’s or you’ve arrived at your destination or the parent involved can’t take it any longer and puts on music and dares someone to speak.
Usually, the game is quite good and we recently dug it out of our car trip archives and I, being the fairly responsible adult, chose the end of school as our topic, since it’s all any kid talks about these days.
The end of school…boo!
The end of school…yah!
No more Mr. Teacher…boo!
No more Mrs. Teacher…yah! (I’m too smart to put in actual names.)
I won’t see my friends…boo!
We can stay up late...yah!
No more [insert organized activity here]…boo!
Sprinklers and road trips and vacations…yah!
After that, the conversation trickled away from the game, and I thought about my own boo-yah’s of summer.
Kids around all day…boo!
Kids around all day…yah!
Juggling schedules because they aren’t in school…boo!
Spending time with them because they are growing so fast…yah!
Rarely having a moment of peace and quiet…boo!
Spontaneous field trips, backyard campouts, science experiments scattered across the kitchen counters, reading books we love together as a family, trying hard to savor every second…yah, yah, yah!


 Originally written/published 5.10.15.

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