Ah, summer officially arrived last month on the 21st. In the Grand Rapids McCarty household, some traditional sayings always accompany this date and the following days in June. Well, not as traditional as "April showers bring May flowers," but ...

• Mike: "Karen, I found my cutoffs."

• Jill to Karen: "Mom, will you please hide his cutoff jeans. They went out years ago."

• Mike: "Karen, I got my banjo. I'm heading out to the jam."

• Jill to Karen: "Mom, NOOOOOO! You're not gonna let him out of the house again with cutoff jeans and a banjo, are you? NOOOOO!"

• Mike: Jill, relax. Cutoffs will come back, trust me. Look, I won't embarrass the family. This time, I'm gonna take my fingerpicks off when I drive."

And here are some traditional "first day of summer" sayings when the McCarty boys were growing up at 9323 Sussex in Detroit:

• ALL OF US: "What can we do?"

• MOM: "I'm tired of patching your jeans with holes in the knees. Here, try this. I cut off the bottoms and made short pants."

• ALL OF US: "What can we do?"

• MOM AND DAD: "Come home when the streetlights go on."

• ALL OF US: "Do we have to?"

• MIKE: "All cherries are good except for the bad ones."

• DENNIS: "Sure, you can make money with a lemonade stand, but you can make more with a Vac-U-Form stand."

• RICK (to DENNIS): "Hmmmm. We each do one-third of Mike's Shopping News route. Mike does the other third, but he takes one half the pay and we have to split the other half. I can't put my finger on it, but something's not right."