back to school

i've been talking with a lot of kids over the past week about the most loved and most hated time of year: back to school, and it got me thinking about this all-together strange and wonderful time of year. in my younger days, i would spend all summer playing all hours of the day and into the late evening (until my mother would yell for us to come in). and then sometime toward late august the inevitable would arrive. the fun would come to an end. i would dread, yet anticipate with great excitement, the first day of school. somehow, sitting here now, years removed from my last "back to school" experience i can only long for those days of excitment and uncertainty. here's a list of things that are circling 'round in my big over-sized head:

+ back to school shopping. every year my family would visit my aunt and uncle in an unanamed large city in california and go back to school shopping. attending a small school in a small town, this experience put me miles ahead of my peers when it came to the latest fashions. entering my 7th grade year, i arrived at school sporting the following: no fear shirt, vans slip-ons, levi silvertabs a miami hurricanes hat positioned just right on my head so i could barely see the bill when i fixed my eyes upward, and a jansport backpack. none of the other kids had this stuff. they were wearing bugle boy, BUM equipment, and, if they were lucky, quicksilver, but nobody measured up to the level of cool i displayed. i give credit to my cousin travis, who, growing up in a big city, was influenced by the latest trends and passed them on to me. i was a god. add in my fresh 'bowl cut' haircut and there was no stopping me.

+ syllabi. this is one of my favorite plural words. when you get to college and the professor hands out the syllabus, there is nothing more daunting and exhillerating than perusing through the details of this document. the assignments, the required reading, the recommended reading (never touched it), the due dates, the planned professor absences that meant you could sleep in on a random tuesday... by the end of the first week you knew exactly what the next four months of your life would look like. i need a syllabus given to me quarterly so my life can make sense again.

+ the night before the first day. did you lay your clothes out on your floor the night before the big day? was your lunch already made (pb&j, doritos, oreos, granny smith apple and capri sun)? because i did. i still lay my clothes out the night before a big day (job interview, wedding, superbowl). i need more of these days in my life. more excuses to fret over what i will look like. christmas eve is the only night that compares. the jitters. the anticipation.

+ comparing summer stories. there's always the rich kids who's parents took them to disneyland or some magical out-of-state place like scottsdale, arizona. various summer camp stories. hook ups and break ups. back in the day, we didn't have cell phones or myspace so when you wrote in a classmate's yearbook on the last day of school, it was assured that you would not see him or her for a good three months unless they lived in your neighborhood. travis faulkner used to always make up stories about where he went that summer, but his mom worked at my elementary school, so we would find out pretty quickly that travis did not in fact travel to argentina that summer to hunt crocodiles and rattle snakes.

+ new television programming. summer was chock full of reruns to the point that it's not even worth watching (not that we ever wanted to anyway... we had rivers to swim in, bikes to ride and blackberries to eat). but the new school year brought season and series premieres, and the promise of football beginning and baseball concluding.

+ new teachers. new kids in school. new prospects. i geuss it's just the newness of it all. the uncertainty. how many times in your life does everything seem so new and wild with possibilities. "this year is going to be the best ever." it never lives up to the hype, but for that day, for that week, we can believe that this year is going to be different. this year is going to be the one that changes everything.

now if you excuse me, i have hours of saved by the bell and the oc to watch.