Ah yes! It's the time of year that children cannot stand but their parents really enjoy (and can't wait to pop the champagne once the kids leave the house) Back to School. A number of schools along with Colleges and Universities will start classes next week, but in a few states, the school year is already in session. Is it me or does it seem like you see back-to-school print ads, commercials on television, and store displays earlier than usual.
Back in the days
I'm not the type of person that would say "back in my day," but this case I will. Back when I was going to school in the 1980s and early 1990s, you would not see a back-to-school ad until early August and even if you saw an ad, you would try to not think about it at all because it was summertime and school was the last think that was on your mind. Nowadays, you would see a back-to-school ad or displayat a store a week to a week and a half after the Fourth of July. That's crazy! Growing up, there was a feeling that I knew that school was about to start. Here's the situation:
My family and I would travel to Atlantic City New Jersey every summer during the third week of July (usually the temperature on the East Coast feels like 10-15 degrees warmer than it is in Ohio. For example, if it's 82 degrees in Akron, the temperature in New Jersey would feel like 90+ degrees. You could feel that East Coast heat and man it was hot!) Each night of our trip, the street lights would come on early, like around 7:30 pm. I would say to myself "It's getting darker pretty early, which means that the days were getting shorter." But my parents reminded that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, meaning that the sunlight appears early in the morning and will set early at night (on a summer day in Ohio, the sun doesn't set until close to 9:00 pm, so the idea of the street lights coming on early was a shock to me.)
OK, so that wasn't a true indication that school was going to start, but when ABC used to show the National Football League's Hall of Fame Game, I knew that the beginning of the school year was right around the corner. You see,when we were on vacation, the hall of fame game was played on Saturday night (the past few years the game took place on Sunday night, just like last week.) Once the game came on, I said "Uh oh ! School is gonna start soon!" But the time that we would come back to Akron, there were no trace of back-to-school" ads anywhere, However, you had the feeling that it was coming because the street lights would come on earlier and earlier each day along with cooler temperatures at night time everyday in August. Then, that fateful day in August would come by when your mom or dad came back home from the store with school supplies (notebooks, pencils, pens, folders, etc.) along with new school clothes for you to wear on your first day or week of classes.
When you are a little kid, once the dog days of August comes by, you're actually bored with summer vacation and can't wait to go back to school. But you're a teen, (unless you're going into graduate high school) you don't want to go back to school anytime soon and you would try to squeeze as much stuff as you possibly can before the school year starts because by then, the hazy and carefree days of summer is virtually over and done with.
So for those out there who are going back to school, enjoy the last days of summer because a break like this will not happen again until Christmas break and who really wants to sit and play outside in the snow and cold weather (not me, I can tell you that!)
