All over stores beginning in early July, I noticed signs for "Back to School" and "pre-school sales" for supplies: pencils, book binders, erasers, crayons, rulers, pens, knapsacks, and all the gadgets that are required for a proper first day of school. As Americans are consummate consumers, I should not have been surprised but I was. In fact, I felt deeply and suddenly saddened. There I was in a Target store, (or was it Wal-Mart?) standing with eyes wide in astonishment at the huge poster signs all over the store hanging like ideas that float and beat down on you insisting you MUST do something! Buy something! Be aware of the need to purchase...NOW!
I was amazed that in early July, most children had just graduated from their previous year of school or college, just as we were about to celebrate our country's birthday and independence from the British on the 4th, and our home had been newly decorated with mini American flags stuck in our flower pots and our flag, though proud and beautiful, limply moved in the oppressive humidity of summer's 100 degree weather from a pole on our house as it does every Memorial Day through Labor Day...just as we were about to enter the full swing of summer's delights, I was bombarded by "Back to School" brainwashing campaigns that had begun in earnest leaving me feeling assaulted.
I left the store empty handed, I had not found the item I was searching for, (nor did I ever) worse, I felt robbed. Robbed of summer, robbed of the BBQ's and fireworks and birthday pool parties and ocean beach days we normally shared as a family with friends. After all, Target and all the other stores declared that school was soon to begin and I had better hurry up and buy supplies NOW! That day! "Don't wait or supplies will run out" was the clear message I heard rumbling around in my head as I drove home in earnest, hoping to catch some of the ocean beach day before school started.
Prompted by the looming fear of school approaching and all the things I must do as a mother who will once again take her son back to college, our Volvo station wagon filled with boxes and plastic storage containers, two guitar cases, computers, clothing, (some of which I should have thrown out before he saw it.) tattered and new books, and all the paraphernalia that a young college student needs, I started to think about the way I felt when I was his age, even younger, and how insecure feelings gnawed at me with each day that approached the opening day of school. As an illustrator, capturing those feelings is difficult...so here is what I did.
Last night, under the lights as it was closing on the day and bedtime was near, I decided I would put myself into the spirit and emotions of a middle school aged person...not a little child any longer, but not a full blown adult either, the insecurities that filled me every late summer about returning to school started to reignite. Although I chose to have braces when I was an editor at Redbook magazine while in my early twenties, not when I should have as a younger person as my my parents urged me to do, I remember those students who did listen to their parents, glumly capitulating to a swath of metal and pain for the duration of middle or high school years. I can still see big shiny chrome brackets that collected food in the hinges and lingered there all day, complaints of mouth discomfort, and oh perish the thought, braces that got caught when you kissed your girlfriend or boyfriend because you both wore them!
Worse was the distinct knowledge that NO ONE liked you. They never would like you no matter how you looked, what you wore, or what kind of grades you got. You were a destined to be LOSER. Sure you had friends from the year before, even a best friend, but that was last year, not this year. What if none of those kids were scheduled to be in any of your classes? What if you were alone with all new faces and personalities to get to know...and what if you did get to know them and they decided to snub you or laugh at you in your shiny new bright chrome tinsel teeth with tuna fish stuck in the wires?
It was of no use. Going back to school was like jumping into a well of black oozing tar. You were facing certain extinction.
Instead, you kept you mouth closed and when necessary, smiled faintly so people couldn't see your shiny new contraptions of torture with tuna fish stuck in the wires, and you worked on your hair. Orange juice cans you discovered made fairly decent curlers and while sleeping was forfeited to get the straightened hair look, you managed to overcome this deprivation by making up for it in gym where you promptly fell asleep during workouts in the corner locker room. Another fear: suppose everyone else was taller than you were now? Surely you must have stopped growing and will remain a midget while your best friend is now a model height and gorgeous. If you hadn't started to "mature"...signs of femininity not yet announcing themselves: breasts non-existant for girls and muscles in your biceps looked like spaghetti strings for boys, you were embarassed and knew you just could NOT go back to school in the fall. Imagining you would have to take off your clothes to put on your gym suit (an unattractive pleated skort style romper with bloomers to match and your name embroidered across the front) was unbearable. Who would want to be seen by all the other girls who had "matured" over the summer in the locker room? Who would want all the other males to laugh at you with your spaghetti string bicep arms while the "he-men" slapped each other on the backs gaffawing hilariously. You knew that everyone, including the teachers and principal, would laugh at you if you looked as though you were still a little girl while everyone else was a "grown up" person.
I remember my mother telling me that one day I'd have hips. When I "matured" I would "fill out" she said. Years later she told me she had lied to make me feel better because like her, she saw I was the same. I never "filled out" and retained the string bean narrow shape I was born with. As the years passed I was grateful I did not "fill out" because that meant there would have been more of the same in later years.
Now, think about blemishes. Horrors! Can you imagine last year you had beautiful soft skin and during the summer you "matured" and instead of growing a chest or biceps, you blossomed into a pitted face of ugly blemishes! There was no way you could face your school mates...not looking like that! Clearisil wasn't good enough to help. So off to the dermatologist for a prescription of Tetracycline and forget about the rest of the summer tanning...that was out of the question...unless you wanted rashes all over your body because the medication and the sun don't work together.
If you were a boy you might have noticed "peach fuzz" around your upper lip. Your mother may have told you to wash your face because you looked "dirty" but in truth she hadn't gotten up close to you and seen that her son was becoming a "man" and men had whiskers! Still, you looked in the mirror and saw a half boy/man and thought : "Nerd"
You were probably right. You were ridiculous looking and your hair was slapped down on your head with some cheap stuff you find in the drug store that smelled like plastic Play-Doh. Same for the girls...instead of a mustache, your legs started to look like female gorillas...but your mother said it was too soon to start shaving. She probably told you that once you started it would be forever and what a nuisance it was!
I digress from the main point which is that school ends when the temperatures rise and the flowers are in full bloom, the birds exhalt in their singing, and the ocean crests cool our feet, clear our heads, and laughter is in abundance. The idea is that summer should be a time when there is NO pressure to do any planning other than what is completely pleasurable and I don't believe thinking about school supplies or teenage problems real or not, should occupy our minds...so tell your teenager they'll have more friends next year and the year after that and have so many by the time they're adults they'll turn off their cell phones and iPads and have blank minds for blogs and wish they were still on the beach with tinsel chrome brackets and wires and tunafish stuck in them, not yet a grown up and laden only with dreams of what the possibilities of life hold before them! Off to the beach before the summer supply of good weather leaves!
