Flashback: The First Week of School

Sam's Car Wash
August 2010 Hillcrest Heights, MD
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I think only amlaped and sakkijarvi will recognize this sign. (I don't think basefinder was in our neck of the woods enough to have seen this sign much)

Sam's Car Wash has been around about as long as I have, in the exact same location, with the same archetype of boarded-looking guys sitting on the side concrete ledge waiting for customers. The cracks in the long concrete driveway look to be the same, too. It's about a mile from my parent's house.

A few thoughts collided in my head this past weekend: this photograph, the end of summer and some Calvin and Hobbes strips.

I still remember the bliss of my summer vacations. Staying up late, sleeping in, spending all morning watching game show after game show. It was great.

Eventually, though, my television-filled daze became plagued by Morton's Crazy Days ads for back-to-school fashions. (I wrote a story in a letter to droozle once where a teacher has a mental breakdown after seeing the first Morton's Crazy Days ad of the summer) Those commercials led, slowly to the dreaded Jerry Lewis Telethon held every Labor Day weekend.

The Telethon meant I no longer had days left of summer vacation, I now only had hours.

As a kid I hated school. Hated it. School meant getting up early, spending long days in classrooms being forced to learn things that had little to no practical application in my life. It also meant having to deal with a bunch of kids I had no desire to be around.

This past weekend, here in the US, was Labor Day Weekend. It's funny how some gut-wrenching experiences never fully go away. With the exception of my years as an elementary school librarian, I've had to work throughout my summers and classes--both in college and when I was teaching--never started on the Tuesday after Labor Day, but that holiday still is scarred for me. The end of summer vacation and [shudder] the start of school.



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I remember telling people one of the summers during high school I was still hoping for a reprieve from the governor regarding having to go to school.

(I suppose if I had actually written to the governor it would have made more sense)


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