Back to Whatever

There’s just a bare hint of a smile on our son’s face in the photo I took in front of our house this morning before the first day of school. He did not want to go back. A few minutes earlier, he told me why he didn’t want to go back, putting on a short one-act play in the kitchen that expressed his (just slightly exaggerated) misgivings about returning to school. He does well and doesn’t have any discipline problems but just doesn’t want to be there.

I know how he feels. I can’t tease or scold him too much because I never wanted to go back to school either. I got good grades and didn’t have any real problems but I always looked at going back to school like adults look at going back to work: You’d still rather be on vacation.

I still love summer. Back then, we’d be outside all day with our friends. My brother and I would be at the pool every day. I swam so much that my hair would start to turn blond with the chlorine, and I had a deep tan. We would go on vacation every year and there would be all sorts of fun things going on.

I remember hearing adults saying things like, “You’re glad to go back,” in what may have been just a bit of projection. I was supposed to want to leave the pool and dusk-to-dawn running around to sit in a classroom and get drilled by a nun about fractions? What are you, drunk?

It was different after I turned 16 and started working. By the time I was in college, I would work 40 hours a week all summer and during breaks, as well as part-time during the school year. But I still always cherished my summers and the relative freedom they brought. Today, I don’t think that attitude has affected me negatively. I love to learn new things today and if I’m awake, I’m reading.

So I never had any warm memories about the smell of freshly sharpened pencils or anything like that. I used to greet a new school year with a sigh like my son does. It was OK but I would rather have been doing something else. I’ll always encourage him to like school, of course, and I won’t let any bad attitude wear off on him, but I can’t revise history and pretend like I was any more enthused.