Time to hit the books

This week is the first full week of classes for the students in the Washington School District. I talked to a few high school students about how they felt about returning to school. Most of them were not thrilled.

I am young enough that I remember well what it was like to return to school. Heck, I started to feel down in the dumps as soon as Aug. 1 rolled around, because I knew that later that month school would be back in session. In my house, we knew the summer was about to run out when it was time to can tomatoes. That was when we ate tomatoes for every meal ? my dad even ate sandwiches consisting solely of bread and tomato slices ? and we still couldn?t keep up with all the tomatoes we harvested.

A long-standing tradition in our family was for my mother to take pictures of my sisters and me outside our house on the first day of school. Our house in Pocahontas was less than half a mile, maybe closer to a quarter mile, from both the elementary school and the high school. This meant we usually walked to school. I was perfectly fine with that, whether it was the first day of school or the dead of winter. My sisters, on the other hand, were not so keen on the idea. Even when I was old enough to drive to school I often chose not to, which irritated my sisters, prompting them to plead with Mom for a ride. Mom usually caved.

Washington is a large enough town that the students who live here never have to leave the city to attend class. That was not true in my hometown. Like much of northwest Iowa, my school district was a combination of several small towns. While the elementary and high schools were practically next door, our middle school was in the town of Rolfe, 13 miles away.

I really dreaded going to middle school, not just because it was in another town but also because there would be so many new students. Our class size was about to double because we would be going to class with the kids from Rolfe and the kids from the Catholic School in Pocahontas. Not only that, we would have to spend the whole day at school without any recess at all! It was bad enough when I entered fourth grade and learned our playtime had gone from three recesses per day to one.

One of my fondest back-to-school memories is from my freshman year of high school. My good friend Alex, a few years younger than I, had returned from Zimbabwe earlier in the year. His parents were missionaries in the country for nearly three years, and during that time Alex was home-schooled. He apparently assumed he would continue to be home-schooled upon returning to the States. The night before school started that year, I received a call from Alex. He told me to have fun in school the next day, in a not-so-sincere way that made it clear he was gloating about not having to go. His mother happened to overhear our conversation.

?Oh, by the way, Alex, you?re going to school tomorrow,? I heard her say in the background.

?What!?? said Alex. ?Mom, I don?t have enough stuff! Andy, I?m gonna have to call you back.?

That is more or less how the exchange went, or at least that?s how I remember it.

I also had a memorable exchange on my first day of college at Iowa State University. I was walking to my 8 a.m. class when I saw a high school classmate of mine. He asked me what class I was going to, and I stumbled over my words because I couldn?t remember what the class was called, other than that it was a political science class that had something to do with international relations.

?I?m going to world?.uh?world?.government, or something like that,? I answered.

I heard a man walking behind me pipe in, ?For heaven?s sake, don?t call it world government!?

It was the professor of the class. Forgetting the name of the class does not usually endear you to the instructor, but at least in this case it gave us something to talk about and made him remember me, which is not easy considering the class had 150 students.