September 7, 2000

School: Cure for the summertime blues

By GARRET LEIVA
Herald editor
       You know summer is unofficially over when Hostess fruit pies are two for a dollar. A drop in the price of modified wheat starch and red #40 can only mean one thing - back to school.
      Today my thoughts and Marvel Super heroes lunchbox go out to every kid who made that long trek to the end of the driveway to wait for the school bus. This morning you came to the cruel realization that Eddie Cochran was wrong when he said there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.
      Going back to school has a way of changing your tune, and your use of double negatives.
      Suddenly, you're transported from a "Lord of the Flies" existence to #2 pencils, subtraction and a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y. After 75 days of summer vacation - half of which you dithered away with the words "I'm bored" - it is time again to find your assigned seat. Hopefully, there isn't gum smeared on the chair or nose goblins lurking under the desk.
      Myself, going back to school equated to pulling a dangling tooth. A mixture of eager anticipation, extricating pain followed by numbness (similar to P.E. sanctioned dodgeball), then a smile of relief.
      Now the first day of kindergarten, like yanking out a bicuspid, can cause a few tears - and not just on the faces of the five year olds. Coloring inside the lines, being a 'lefty' scissors user in a world of righties, raising your hand to go to the bathroom and not the other way around; thank goodness for naptime and carpet squares. Kindergarten also taught me one very important life lesson: Play-Doh is not considered one of the four food groups.
      As my grade school years progressed, preparing for the first day of school meant a shopping excursion of epic proportions.
      Growing up in a town without a traffic light (until my junior year of high school when we skipped class to take turns driving through a green) school clothes shopping was an 80 mile trip to the Saginaw mall. While the ride on I-75 was abysmal enough, trying clothes on was worse. The psychological scaring of modeling "husky" boys Toughskin jeans for both your mother and the JCPenny sales lady; let's just say I'm still picking at the scabs.
      Softening the emotional body blow of purchasing multi-packs of Hanes underwear was the part of shopping I truly treasured: school supplies. Each year I would pick out a plethora of pencils and pens, big pink erasers and folders with smiling faces you could deface with alien antennas. Equally intriguing were the items that served little purpose for a fourth-grader, like a graphing compass - with a point 10 times sharper than safety scissors, and a protractor- very useful for drawing spaceships.
      Each new year of elementary school brought subtle changes in homeroom teachers, bus routes and colors in the cafeteria goulash.
      Then came the rude awakening known as junior high.
      Suddenly lunchboxes were taboo, the opposite sex lost their "yuck" factor, and the difference between ignorance and apathy was "I don't know and I don't care." No one carried a pencil holder or interestingly a graphing compass or protractor - even though they'd come in handy in geometry class. Junior high also taught me one very important life lesson: Locker combinations, unlike ages 13-15, should be committed to memory.
      First day of classes during high school was far from teeth pulling. Football season, a set of car keys and a ride to school that wasn't bright yellow, subjects that were interesting despite a lack of protractors or compasses. No excruciating pain, only the relief from a boring last few days of summer.
      I don't often do this, but today I brown bagged my lunch. I'm more of a hot lunch kind of guy, although I still shy away from goulash. Today, however, I had this unmistakable yearning for red #40 - or perhaps a bite of Play-Doh.
      Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail at gleiva@gtherald.com.