Yesterday was the first day for the youngest of the granddaughters, Olivia, who started third grade. My daughter cannot believe Olivia is going to be eight in a few days. It does seem remarkable. The other granddaughter, Emma, starts seventh grade today.
We got a picture of Olivia in front of the house with her backpack in front of her. The backpack looks nearly as big as her. It looks heavy. Of course you can't see in it, but it looks like it is filled with bricks. What the hell do you take to school on your first day? Shouldn't be books. You get those on your first day, no? Maybe lunch. Or maybe they need the backpack to bring stuff home? I have no idea.
Of course neither my wife or went to school with a backpack. When Obama became president I was convinced we were then going to see presidents from here on it who went to school with backpacks. It's going to be impossible to elect a candidate who is so old they didn't go to school with a backpack. Right? Then along came Trump, who is just a little bit older than myself. So much for the backpack theory.
Olivia was smiling, and looks completely ready for her first day. Aside from the backpack observation, it was plain the see she was wearing shorts. She goes to a public school, and not a public chartered school either. "They can wear shorts to school." Yep. Not much of a dress code other than you shouldn't arrive naked.
My wife went through her education in Catholic schools, so she always wore a uniform. I went to public schools (aside from a stint in Greek school where I too wore a uniform) and never wore shorts. The girls in the photo of my second grade class are all in dresses.
Aside from the backpack and the shorts, I started to think if I remember any of my first days at school—any grade? Nope. Even college, I can't remember the order of the classes on my first day.
And I got a chance to have two first days of college since I dropped out of the first one and enrolled in New York's City College, CUNY.
I don't remember the first class I went to there, either. But I do remember delaying my attendance to the point that I showed up for what might have been the third session of the French class I was supposed to be in. I can still remember handing the instructor my admittance card and her annoyance that I was just now showing up.
I took my seat in one of those tiered seating classrooms and listened to everyone talking French. I had to take a language. I had already taken five years to complete three years of French in grammar, and high school, and now realized I was thoroughly not ready to go through that crap again. I never went back to the class, and soon after after added CUNY to the list of places of higher education that I dropped out of. (The count remained at two.)
The point is, I have absolutely no memory of any first day of school. There is one photo of myself and a few other neighborhood kids standing at the curb just next to a school bus door. We were being bused to kindergarten, since the school we could walk to had too many kids in kindergarten. It was a post-war baby boom.
I don't even know if it was a first day, or not. My mother didn't write on the back of the photo, and I think I only remember one of the kids. We were standing there with our names on a card that was hung from our necks with yarn. The bus driver needed to know who got off where, since we probably had no clue.
I do distinctly remember my first day of work at the company I took a job with, the third company I started with after my exposure to higher education. That one has stayed with me, perhaps because when I was directed where to hang my coat up, and seeing the rack was filled, I wisecracked to the secretary, "Is everyone in today because it's payday?"
Turns out it wasn't. The secretary explained that Friday is the start of the pay cycle, and all new employees start on Friday. It was great to have a first day immediately prior to a weekend.
I'm so old now I can't remember any first days of school at any level, only the start of the third place of employment. I stayed with that company 36 years, so it was a long time before I had another first day on the job. And I do remember that one. And the first day of the next job. I remember the last days as well.
We are born on our first day. We've been living a series of first days for quite a while.
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