School started here yesterday. It hadn’t occurred to me until I drove by an elementary school around 3:30 and saw a cavalcade of buses in front. Elementary schools make me really, really happy. I don’t know why this is, but there is something so joyful about an elementary school. It’s not entirely deeply embedded memories, at least I don’t think it is, because elementary school pretty much sucked for me from third grade on.
But now, school has started, and that’s just great. Order has been restored. And I can let Max out in the yard without worrying about him barking at kids all morning.
I realized recently that if at the one and only point in my life when I thought I wanted to have children, I had done so, I would have a child starting kindergarten right now. I don’t spend a hell of a lot of time what-iffing my life, but every now and then it’s an interesting exercise to consider the trajectory of the other choices I could have made. It is striking to consider what is lost in every decision – in this case, a five year old kid; had I chosen to have a child (and I’m assuming a compliant uterus – who knows?) I would have lost myself – it was never what I really wanted. What I wanted was to be normal, and happy with normal things. Now that I think of it, during major transitions, I always reach a point at which I get frustrated and decide my life would be easier if I did things like everyone else. But if the exquisite disasters I’ve created have taught me anything, it’s that doing things like everyone else is far more devastating than weirding along and accepting that I am never going to fit in completely anywhere. (How many times am I going to learn this lesson? Jebus, I’m 32, let’s move on.)
So: elementary schools. And school supplies! I REALLY love school supplies. Man, walking through Staples a few weeks ago I totally wanted a new backpack. I have absolutely no need for one, but really, what is more freaking fun than a new backpack? Also, I have noticed over the past few years that it is impossible to find those blue, vaguely denim binders with the metal rings and metal clip in front (which inevitably would wear a hole in the first divider). Those things were standard issue for years. I wonder if any companies still make them. I bet I could find a use for a binder right now if I had one.
