Pupil Haze

The day after Labor Day. Time for those three little words.

Back to school.

Three words that inspire either angst or elation---or retail dollar signs, depending on your perspective.

Back to school.

Another school year has officially begun---some districts began before Labor Day---and with it comes nine more months of the unknown.

For the parents of a 16-year-old girl---that would include my wife and me---the next nine months are likely to be a roller coaster ride.

Driver's ed somewhere out on the horizon. Boys. Teachers. Catty girls. Homework up the ying-yang (and if you've ever had homework up the ying-yang, you know how painful that can be).





Back to school.

The alarm clock gets set again for 6:00 a.m. Another nine months of trying to get the kids to eat breakfast---you'll even settle for cold pizza from the fridge if that's the ticket. Our daughter's stomach doesn't open for business in the wee hours, so we're thinking about buying her an IV. (Just kidding, honey---probably).

Back to school.

The nest empties for seven hours a day now, almost a full work day. Better have some vittles ready at 2:30, because the kids come home starved!

About the homework. Mom and dad are steeling ourselves in our house, bracing for the onslaught. Kid girl gets the worst of it, of course, but us parents are hardly spared. There's just so much of it, and the children need help just to keep up with the volume.

Back to school for my wife and me, too.

I'm glad that I already have my degree, because in this second go-round of high school academics, old dad isn't faring too well.

I've been looked at cross-eyed more than once by our daughter when she comes home from school with news of a poor grade on a math assignment I helped her with. And I get the math homework because I'm supposedly good at math.

Yeah, sure---math that they taught circa the 1970s. And math that was actually taught in high school. The stuff they're doling out new is best served on a campus in Cambridge, Mass.

I feel dumber and dumber every year that our daughter advances through the school system, climbing that ladder toward graduation. I think by her senior year she'll be smarter than me.

Already I think she would tell you it's pretty close.

Back to school.

The opposite of the Alice Cooper anthem.

Nine more months of teachers' (and my daughter's) dirty looks.

Maybe I'll take some night school, to keep up.

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