Back to School

Can you hear it?

That bumble bee bus rumble…

The grumble of kids in a jumble…

Yes, it’s that time of year again!

And I think it’s about time that I come out of the cubbie and confess –

I loved school.

Actually, it was more of an all caps kind of LOVE.

In fact, School and I had a very serious long-term relationship. And if it had been up to me, it would have been a TRUE LOVE FOREVER kind of relationship. But when I was 28, School said, “Here’s your doctorate – there’s the door.” And that was that.

Sigh.

Anyway, when I was a kid, I thought everybody felt the way I did. Then a neighbor boy told me that he hated school – and it sounded like an all caps kind of HATE, too.

Whoa.

I just couldn’t get my head around that one.

I mean, where else were you going to learn cool stuff, paint cool stuff, AND get a ditto hit all in the same day?

Let me pause here to bring those of you belonging to Generation Y, Z, or Zombie up to speed – before copies went digital, they were ditto. And I’m pretty sure that the process of making dittos involved solvents that are now considered to be leading causes of brain cell death.

But oh – the smell of dittos damp from the copier!

Forty years later, I can still remember it exactly. Because, you know, the first thing you did when you had one of those fresh worksheets in your hot little hands was jam it up to your nose and inhale deeply.

Well, at least that’s what I did.

Hmmm…

I guess that explains a lot.

PROMPT: School days are always great subjects for children’s books – particularly those first day of school days. Get some inspiration from This School Year Will Be the Best! by Kay Winters and Renee Andriani, Back to School, Splat! by Rob Scotton, or Mary Ann Rodman and Beth Spiegel’s First Grade Stinks! (obviously, somebody didn’t like the dittos).

On which side of the school fence did you fall – LOVEr or HATEr?