Back to school

It's been surreal the past few weeks - this marks my FIRST fall season where I am not spending it back in school!!

Oh, how quickly I lose track of time when I am removed from the structures of the academic calendar...

The past few weeks, every Wal-Mart run has caused me to peek over by the Hallmark card stand to see the overflowing back-to-school supply stands. 99-cent spiral-bound notebooks, folders, loose-leaf paper, JanSport backpacks galore! Only then did it dawn on me that it was back to school time. Alas, I have graduated from that. :-) :-) :-)

(Insert a HUGE JUMP FOR TRIUMPHANT JOY HERE - Homework, you can't touch me now!!!! Muahahahahahaha!!)

Yesterday and today were the first days back to school for the public and private schools here in Dublin and Marysville. The big ol' yellow school buses are back out for nine months of service.

It brings back so many memories for me and my first days of school. In a way, I miss it. Ultimately, I know I can't go back and relive it - not until I have kids of my own someday. (Yikes.) For now, it is just another life experience I mournfully toss into the 'if only I knew then, what I know now' pile.

Yes, it brings back memories indeed. The new tennis shoes, my favorite outfit from all of my back-to-school shopping, all picked out and primed to wear for my first day back. Out waiting for the bus, smelling the morning dew on the grass and painfully missing out on a summer day. You could always tell you were missing out on a nice day of weather when the sun was already cresting through the voluptuous green trees at 6:45 AM while waiting for the Lamers bus to come diesel-ing around the corner.

The new pack of colored pencils, the crisp folders, all of the grocery bags used to cover textbooks - even the overload of the various perfumes and hair gels the high school girls would skunk on at 6 AM, hair still wet while on the bus ride into school - all of those scents knocked me off my feet once that bus would pull around the corner, stop, and open its doors for me to climb the three entry steps.

Scientists aren't too far off the beaten path when they say scent is the sense that memory is strongest tied to.

Anyway, good luck to all of the kiddies out there starting yet another year. It may feel monotonous and like a prison right now, but it's good fer ya. Builds character, puts hair on your chest, makes you really work for something. And you'll miss a part of all of this, later. :-)