School Supplies

DC weather lacks a certain crispness that would be appropriate this first week of September. Despite the mugginess and high temps, I feel like sitting down with a fat issue of Seventeen magazine, gazing at the Benetton ads, catching a whiff of the Babysoft perfume insert and plotting out my school year. (The facts that I'm all grown up with no classes to attend except Gymboree seem even less consequential than the weather).

Of course, in Illinois, we went back to school in August. It was too hot to wear our new fall clothes; the girls who tried always looked flushed and miserable by lunch. I think I owned one very special Benetton sweater and couldn't imagine affording another. Locker rooms smelled like hairspray and aerosol deodorant more than anything else. But, the August issue of Seventeen hinted of a more glamorous existence that might be mine with the right shade of lip gloss. Fresh school supplies promised that this would be the year I stopped procrastinating. And perhaps my class schedule would match up with the boy I liked, and he would be dazzled by my cool mastery of Language Arts or Social Studies! (Shockingly, that scenario never played out.)

I miss the anticipation September brought. Maybe I'll buy a new spiral and take some notes during Gymboree.