It's here.
The game is over..
The summer is gone.
I am not a kid anymore.. While it has been more than a decade since I enjoyed those wondrous three months a year off from buses and books and bells, I still recall the feeling .. I don't think those childhood feelings ever vanish. When it snows in the winter, I still gaze at the bottom of my local TV stations to see if schools will be closed, as though it matters.. Work never cancels.
And even more, I'll say that it's tougher watching those school closings in the winter because the two grade schools and one high school I attended are now all closed. The perils of modern Catholic education: Bankrupt because of priest scandals.. yes, the devil's smoke is in the Vatican.
But I digress, we are not near winter yet.
However it's closings on..
The final weekend of summer (and for some schooling aged kids, you're already back) ...
College is back.. All those joys of summer, jobs flipping burgers--if you were able to get one during this depression...err.. recession... err . . recovery--are now over.. Final paychecks picked up and final books covered.
It's a strange time of year..
I have always loved the autumn, as any reader of this site who has followed me for some time know. The problem is, of course, is autumn comes with roadblocks to happiness. That intensely tough feeling of knowing, come Monday, you'll wake up early in the hours when the sun's rising.. you'll brownbag a lunch with help from Mom's incredible sandwich making skills, and you'll board a bus into months of trauma. The bricks will be put in the wall, all in all..
Come college time, that grade school feeling of sickness in your gut goes away a bit. In that age, your drinking friends and sexual partners will be waiting to greet you. Your moral code will slip into depravity. Not for all, but certainly for enough to make it unworthy of caring about your newfound school year attendance.
I care more about those kids.. those young ones.. the children whose minds are going to be molded into something.
So when I read a story like this, of kids being forced to kneel before dismissal, makes me sick. It's bad enough that they have to submit to the rules, often without any sense, but now kneeling before a master? An adult master? This is horrific, in my mind..
So here we go.. school days.
Alice Cooper can't save you now.
The only thing you can do, student, is persevere. Like in SURVIVOR, outwit and outlast.
May will be here before you know it..
Adulthood will, too.
But adulthood isn't all it's cracked up to be--as a matter of fact, there are days I'd trade it in a heartbeat to be 13 again.
And finally, no matter how many years pass on by, you'll be amazed that, come August, you're going to get that same 'back to school gut feeling' like you had when you were young and dumb...
It never changes.