“I wouldn’t go back there for the world!” I said to a woman whose daughter was picking out new school stuff alongside my son.
“All I did was worry about homework and clothes, and if I wasn’t doing that, I was chasing a boy – not that I ever caught one. It was just way too much stress.”
“I know!” the woman laughed. “I’m glad this one’s only in first grade!”
“That’s when I was talking about,” I replied. She grabbed her child and fled.
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the leaves start to fall, the air takes on a certain chill, and the children of the world whine a collective, “Aw, do we have to go to school today?” The only difference these days, it seems, is that it’s our kids doing the whining, rather than us. We, of course, are happily doing the driveway dance as the bus pulls away.
But even so, year after year, I also find that fall is the single biggest door to my past, the time of year when, like no other, I want to be a kid again. For some reason it holds the most acute memories, memories long buried that can be evoked simply by the scent of a cold, crisp, still autumn night . . . memories of being a kid when I was really enjoying being one. Now that my son is has come to an age that I remember well, the memories are all the more poignant.
I remember shopping for school clothes, which back then involved an annual September trek to downtown Buffalo, rather than the year-round biweekly jaunts to Target to which my son has become so accustomed. In my day, school clothes consisted of two new outfits from AM&A’s (because that’s where my mom had a charge card), at least one of which was corduroy. I remember the smell of the corduroy, the new-clothes smell that I wished would never wash out.
And of course I remember adorning my new clothes with snowmobile boots lined with bread bags, because we had to walk nine miles to school in a raging blizzard uphill both ways. Or was just to the end of the driveway? Possibly. But it was a darn long driveway, okay? And it did have sort of an incline.
As I listen to my son dreamily recount sitting on the bus with Jennifer, I also remember my own first crush. It was kindergarten, I believe, Frankie something-or-other. Not too hard to forget the last name of the guy who set the astonishingly popular trend of breaking my heart. No sir; a little hypnosis, a few years of therapy, and that name was barely a puff of smoke in the raging inferno that would become my imagined love life.
Middle school gave us the Dorothy Hamill haircut and the elation of walking into class and seeing the projector set up. We listened to albums with our friends and wore bright red socks with individually knit toes and had rollerskating parties and considered life complete if we actually made eye contact with the boy of our dreams.
Then came high school. I was the kind of kid people wouldn’t mind sitting with on the bus if there were no other seats available, but wouldn’t be caught dead talking to in the hall ten minutes later. I never really understood this phenomena. But I figured they must’ve thought I was clean, and I had that going for me.
I pined to Barry Manilow and partied to Peter Frampton. I went to Friday night football games and the Homecoming dance and Sadie Hawkins, and while I don’t quite recall any of those things being particularly fun for me, I do remember that the prospect of them made me giddy. Maybe that’s what was so exciting – the anticipation of the new year, the chance to do things differently . . . to do things better.
Every year I’d come back to school thinking this was My Year, as if something magical happened over the summer which would allow me to be seen for the cool girl I was and once and for all dissolve the Pigpen-like cloud of dweebness I had instead adopted. (Sigh.) Sure, it was fantasy. But it made me really look forward to fall, as I still do.
Maybe going back wouldn’t be so bad after all. I mean, it’s not like I’d have too far to go, right? I still worry about homework, although I do get paid for it now. And I still worry about clothes, or at least if they’ll ever fit again. And I’m still chasing a boy, although this one happens to think I’m the greatest thing on earth since sliced bread.
Heck, with that advantage, maybe I can finally catch one.