For the first time in I don’t know when we are officially out of the “back to school” business. We have two kids and neither will be enrolling in school this fall.
For the past month, I have seen bedeviled hollow-eyed adults at the mall and discount stores, pursued by ravenous packs of offspring. The latter have insatiable appetites for spiral notebooks, glitter glue and mechanical pencils. They have gleefully outgrown pricey sneakers and designer clothes that fit just a few months ago.
There are fees for the PTA and the athletic association, not to mention lockers and parking passes. The resumption of school means nine months of dragging pettish kids out of bed.
Simply having a child head to college does not release one from “back to school” conscription. It means that instead of pencil boxes, binders and gel pens, one transitions to laptops with the right operating system installed, comforters in school colors and pounds of nonperishables that can be microwaved.
I’m not going to opine about a simpler and better time when I went off to school with just two suitcases and a stereo. I’m going to remonstrate that I was born too dadgum early and missed out on some truly wonderful opportunities. For example, our daughter Amelia’s freshman dorm at the University of South Carolina had an elevator. That would have come in handy my sophomore year when my room was on the third floor. Even a strong young back will complain when carrying 75 record albums up three flights.
However, the most disturbing phenomenon of back to school is how it completely scuttles one’s presentiment of time. A year or two ago — if memory serves — our son Zach walked into Heards Ferry Elementary with Power Ranger sneakers. But this past Wednesday he called to report he had wrapped all course work for his master’s degree at Indiana University. Hmmm.
I’d swear it was last year we had to sign a permission slip for Amelia to take a day trip to a museum. But that can’t be, because she’s working in Alaska this summer and her degree from South Carolina came in the mail last month.
It is one thing to prepare a child to go out into the world and quite another when they do it. Perhaps this is why people like us hold fast boxes of art projects that are little more than a crayon scrawl on a piece of paper. Or essays, written in middle school, on their plans for the future. Or a letter from a university welcoming them to the upcoming freshman class.
Perhaps one reason we won’t be part of the parental mob dealing with back to school is because part of us never truly left.
Jim Osterman lives in Sandy Springs. Reach him at jimosterman@rocketmail.com
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