Smack Dab in the Middle of the Summer

I try not to take things for granted. For example, yesterday Caroline and I sludged on foot through heavy humidity to Planet Follywood for breakfast, and as my sunglasses fogged up like a time-lapsed cataract, I thought to myself how nice it is not to have to assess essays. 

Of course, we’re smack dab in the middle of the summer, so I wouldn’t have any essays to grade anyway, but still, if I weren’t retired, I’d be lamenting that it’s really not the middle of the summer, given contemporary school schedules. The post Labor Day onset of school has gone the way of the hand-cranked eggbeater, a relic of the predigital era. I recently overheard someone say that school this year starts on August 7th, which is way too early — way, way too early.

Of course, the very beginning of school does have its charms, like meeting new colleagues and students, and the welcome-back faculty and staff cocktail party is fun, but the next thing you know, you’re slogging through over-annotated summer reading books and their accompanying journals. More than any other project, including research papers, I hated assessing those annotated novels and journals, fussing over inelegant quotation integration, encouraging students to break quotes into small units and imbed them into analytical prose.

For example, 

Not: “Moore juxtapositions descriptions of impoverished Camilla Creel and Jill Birdsong during Activity Period. Camilla has no friends. ‘As usual Camilla Creel doesn’t move from her seat when the bell rings for Activity Period. The rest of the girls in her home economics class can’t wait to put away the dress patterns they’re cutting out and stow those scissors so they can rush out into the teeming halls where boys cut fool and girls gossip.’ Compare this with ‘Jill Birdsong has made her way to the Junior Civitan meeting in Miss McGee’s room.'”

[vigorous yawn]

But Instead: Moore adds another set of foils to underscore differences among the characters, in this case Camilla Creel and Jill Birdsong. At Activity Period, friendless Camilla ‘doesn’t move from seat when the bell rings,’ unlike Jill Birdsong, who is making ‘her way to the Junior Civitan meeting in Miss McGee’s room’ to interact with her peers in choosing a charitable project for an African American nursing home. Ironically, Camilla is so impoverished that her family lives in an abandoned school bus, but to the rest of the school, she’s essentially invisible.”^[1]  

[lesser yawn]

So, my mid-summer Island life isn’t darkened by dreading upcoming responsibilities. Now I can complain about the heat and tourists walking five abreast on Hudson Street instead of interminable faculty meetings and the annual blood borne pathogen tutorial and accompanying test.

[cue Alice Cooper]: “School’s out forever.” The back-to-school sales no longer produce sighs.

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^[1] from Today, Oh Boy, (121-3).  BTW, I realize it’s obnoxious to market my novel like this. But buy it, dammit. Here’s a LINK.