The feeling usually starts late on Saturday, and becomes more emotionally pervasive on the Sunday of that long weekend in September. The sensation is a primal one that is difficult to both thwart and even argue with. It’s time for the games to end and for school to begin. All that is dreary in life has returned after the bliss of summer and its missed opportunities are relegated to personal history.
It matters not a whit how long it is since you left school, Labor Day Weekend is back-to-school weekend and the sour and apprehensive emotions are never destined to die within our fundament. We’re stuck with them until the grave – and hopefully not beyond that. Wouldn’t that suck? For eternity you are going to feel like it’s time to return to school.
I still remember my very first day of first grade with a clarity that can only be found with memories of other traumatic experiences in life. I remember gathering out in front of Douglas Road School (pictured) with my mom, in which I joined many other kids also with their moms, and likely assorted aunts and grandmas. I don’t remember any dads being in attendance. Some kids were crying. I thought that was pretty lame. Suck it up, boys, I thought. Of course, if I was to know at that time what this 12-year sentence was to entail I would have been wailing with the rest of them.
That first day seemed very long to me. First and second graders got sprung at 2:30 in those days, but 9 to 2:30 is an interminable time if you are a youngster who had theretofore lived a life of unfettered freedom. After the teacher introduced herself – she was a kind of crone-like grouch named Mrs. Hallworth – we got down to business. I don’t remember just what business it was, but part of it involved her finding out just what we knew by that tender point in our lives.
“Who can print their own name?” she asked. Aced that puppy, I thought smugly. Of course, my name was only three letters long, so there wasn’t too much room for error. I should have been grateful I hadn’t been christened Sviatoslav. Actually, I was even able to read at a moderate level by that point. I didn’t like the fact that my cousin, who was two years older knew stuff I didn’t, so I had endeavored to understand at least the rudiments of word-recognition.
Later we had a story. It was Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat, which was the riveting tale of a bear that went around squashing the houses of people who didn’t respect him. I thought it was a pretty babyish story.
We had recess at one point at which time we were exhorted to eat just a tiny bit of our lunch. We were also sprung for fifteen minutes. Later came lunch. I had jam sandwiches. Not very healthy, but parents didn’t have a lot of money to spend on fancy nosh in those days.
I cannot remember what transpired the rest of that very long day. But, for the first time in my life I began to understand the value of clock-watching, even if I didn’t know yet how to tell time.
The first day of school also meant new stuff. New Pink Pearl eraser, HB pencils, pencil box, crayons – especially crayons. And a lunch pail. The lunch pail thing – as in dweeby little kid lunch pails – continued until about 3rd grade, at which time it became de rigueur for the young bucks about my school to acquire ‘man’ lunch pails, as in discards from their blue collar fathers. My dad wasn’t blue color, but he did have an old pail from his student job days. I was in heaven when he passed that on to me.
Other than that, school was, I came to learn, essentially 10-months of tedium that only abated with the end of June at which time I could return to being ‘me’ until that ugly weekend in September when the thing was slated to start all over again.
And, like my personal Groundhog Day I guess my destiny is that it continues to start all over again for my individual eternity. How about you?
