Only four more weeks until school starts

I know the kids are going to hate hearing this, but its just four more weeks til school starts! Most summer vacations have been taken and now its just the slow, hot move toward that first day of school.

As a kid, I really looked forward to that first day of school. I grew up in a neighborhood with no other kids for blocks, so most of my summer was spent at the library, reading books or practicing my cursive writing. My grandmother would pick an article out of the paper every day to have me re-write it in cursive, a skill no longer taught in our schools. Yeah, I hated it, but boy, am I glad now that she took the time to stand over me and make me do it every day.

For some reason, I couldn’t go barefoot until the 4th of July. Everybody else is running around in the grass, squishing their toes in the mud, and there I sat with my shoes on. No wonder I’m a geek!

That’s probably why the trip to Casper to do school shopping was such an event for me. It meant being back in the classroom with all the kids!

My clothes all came from K-Mart and shoes were bought at Payless when you could buy one pair for $5 and get the second pair for free. No fancy designer jeans. No $60 dollar tennis shoes. You got a Big Chief tablet and some #2 pencils and you were set. New crayons were a must.

Now, even though my kids are grown, I still like to look over all the school supplies. They get such cool stuff now. Sometimes, I even pick up scented markers or a really neat spiral notebook that catches my fancy.

Four weeks until pencils and notebooks and crayons and football.