Do you have a child or grandchild who is about to end the school year and launch summer vacation? Can you hear them shouting something like “School’s Out for Summer”? Have you listened to them enthusiastically list all those things they get to do now that summer vacation is beginning – and all those things they won’t have to do?

If you do, chances are that their excitement will bring you back to one of your favorite “school’s out” memories. It almost doesn’t matter what we actually did with our summer vacation, as long as we were able to experience and savor the anticipation of everything we would do. Special trips. Swimming every day. Sleeping late. Reading what we wanted instead of what we were told to read. Staying up extra late. Visiting special family and friends in far-off places. Picnics, fireworks, and late-night movies. Just kicking back and doing nothing.

So thank your young one for rekindling those memories, and if you are already engaged in or planning to write your life story, count this as a particularly fun entry. Just start with this simple Story Spark:

“When school let out for summer, I was always ready to…”

Write for 10 minutes about this, without planning your response. Relive that heightened sense of what was to come. Honor the importance of that feeling for you now, today, as you contrast it to the way you approach your life in summer, winter, spring, and fall. Is there something you can learn from putting yourself in the shoes of those school-bustin’-out kids?

As a life story ghostwriter and teacher, I trust that remembering moments like these will enliven your memoir or autobiography. So why not dive into one of those stories right now, while it’s fresh in your mind. After all, before you know it, school will be starting up again. Don’t let the summer pass you by!

- Kevin Quirk, author of “Life Is a Book And It’s Time To Write It: An A-to-Z Guide To Help Anyone Write Their Life Story.” A personal historian and ghostwriter of memoirs and autobiographies, he has been helping people tell their life stories for 15 years.