Back To School

The Wife, she is counting down the days. Summer break is almost over, and teachers must all go back to school. Bummer, especially if you’re married to a teacher.

Gone are the lazy days of summer, where the only thing stressful in a teacher’s life is whether Starbucks will run out of mocha-chocka-latta thingies, ground fresh from imported dark brown coffee beans, before she gets there for her daily infusion of caffeine. Well, that and whether Trading Spaces will be a rerun or not.

Yes, I can say from first-hand experience, the stress level of a teacher is very low during the summer. Not so when they return to school.

One of the primary reasons for the increased stress level of teachers as they return to the hallowed halls of academia is no 2 o’clock mocha-chocka-latta thingies. You want happy and productive teachers? Well, then do I have a solution for you!

Just build a Starbucks in every teachers’ lounge in this county. Might as well try that — the 1 percent pay raise they got from the state last year sure didn’t help much to boost their morale.

Teachers indeed have a stressful job when they go back to school, especially high school teachers. Just ask yourself this question, “Would you want a job spending eight hours a day, five days a week with a room full of teenagers?” Yep, I thought not; neither would I.

The Boy is the only teenager in our house, and recently I’ve thought about moving while he’s back at school and not telling him where we moved to. Half the time he’s difficult, and the rest of the time he’s impossible, but he’s mine, so I guess I’ll keep him.

Besides, who wants another teenager in the house anyway? And he sure comes in handy when we have new office furniture to put together and computers to hook up.

The Boy, he is counting down the days. Summer break is almost over and all bored teenagers lying around the house must all go back to school. But before he goes back to school, we must make that ever important trip to buy new clothes and shoes. The Boy whines, “But Daaad, I can’t wear the same stuff I wore last year.” I tried to convince him that he doesn’t need anything new, that his old stuff is just fine. Nope, didn’t work.

“Son, you don’t even play basketball. Why do you need basketball shoes? And who wears shoes that cost $150 anyway?” He was relentless, and after two hours of listening to his very compelling argument why he needed the $150 basketball shoes, we were off to the store. It was the only way I could get him to stop arguing.

At the high-price shoe store The Boy ran into five of his classmates; all buying the same $150 basketball shoes. None of them play basketball either. Looking around, I notice they all seem to bring at least one disgruntled parent with them to enjoy their shoe-buying experience and, of course to pay the bill. How thoughtful of them.

The Boy? Well, he paid for his own high-price basketball shoes out of the money he earned putting together our new office furniture and two new computers. But this isn’t a story about computers and office furniture. This is the sad story about teachers and kids going back to school.

After paying for the shoes, I let The Boy drive me back home. (There’s not enough ink and paper to describe THAT experience.) On the way back I said, “Son I don’t know why you had to have such expensive shoes. Back-in-the-day, my mom would spend $50 and get four pairs of school shoes.”

“Daaad, you’re not gonna tell me another one of your stories are you?”

“Well as a matter of fact, son, I am.”

The school bell rang at 8 a.m., sounding the official start of my fifth-grade year at Mt. Olive’s Elementary school. It was gonna be a great school year; everyone who was cool was in our class and most live on Flamingo Street.

My best friend Goofy Steve sat to the right of me; Neighbor Thomas sat to the left. Bubba Hanks was behind me, and Preston Weston was in the next row to the right and three seats up. Occupying the seat behind him was my girlfriend Candi. After two years of sitting next to her, fifth grade was the year that I finally told her she was, in fact, my girlfriend.

Yep – a great class to be in ... except for two things. The first was that the resident bully from Flamingo Street sat in the last seat in the last row of the classroom. That person was none other than my arch nemesis Down-the-Street Bully Brad.

On the first day of school, he threw a spitball and hit me right in the back of the head. He was pulled to the office by his ear. I went to the bathroom to clean up.

The second thing not so great about our fifth grade class was our teacher, Old Miss Crabtree. After not having her for our fourth-grade teacher, she moved up to our fifth-grade class. Lucky us. It was an interesting time in fifth grade, and you’ll read all about it this year.

Looking back, that was Miss Crabtree’s last year of teaching. I wonder if our class had anything to do with that or was she just counting the days also ... till she could retire.