Last first day of school

Today I found myself with a whole day (after church) with nothing scribbled into the box on my calendar. Nothing. I rarely find myself with days like these, where nothing is scribbled in and nothing is piled up at home that needs to be dealt with...thanks to last weekends marathon laundry day. So I did something I've been needing to do for a long time, I went shopping for girl clothes. Not my favorite thing to do. The trying on of certain girl items always leaves me uncomfortable and irritated. Us big girls only have a few places that we can get certain girl items and when none of those items fits appropriately, well, I get pretty irritated with clothing manufacturers. But that's another blog entry.

Anyway, after my girl clothes shopping, I wandered through my favorite chain store (think bulleyes) and then decided that though I really love Aunt C. and could have dropped by her house as a surprise, I really just wanted to go home. (Thanks for understanding Aunt C.) And so I got onto the highway headed towards home. Mistake number one. Within a mile traffic came to a slow and we crawled along for a while. Then traffic stopped. I turned to the news radio station hoping to hear if this was just regular traffic or if there was an accident ahead. No word on that but the person reading the news was only too happy to share that this week we'll be having a heat wave**. Lovely. Suddenly the traffic started moving again and I happily moved along with the rest of the cars around me, past the one exit that would take me onto an alternate route and then traffic stopped again. That was enough, I quickly took the next exit and decided that my shopping time was not yet done. I then made mistake number two. I went into an office store.

The parking lot was busy but I've not been to this particular office store before, so I didn't think much of it and then I went inside. Holy cow. Parents and children were everywhere. Dads were yelling for children across the store, Mom's were pushing carts filled to the brim with back to school items and children were wandering through the aisles looking for just the right folder or pencil set. Yikes. The cashier commented that tomorrow is going to be even worse. I wished her luck and got out of there fast!

Driving home (on the alternate route) I started thinking about school. Specifically my last first day of high school. Not being in the "In" crowd I didn't' get the memo that said "wear toga's on the first day of school" but I wasn't the only one. I remember walking onto campus (having driven myself to school for the first time) and thinking "This is my Senior year". It felt different, I felt different. Maybe it was the acknowledgement that life was going to change drastically in the next year or the realization that over the summer life had changed for me. Whatever it was I remember that last first day of school and smile. It was a good year, a growing year. I wouldn't change it for anything.

Tomorrow the class of 2009 will step onto the local High School campus for their last first day of school. I hope and pray that years down the road they will be able to look back at that day and smile.

**If I had been thinking I would have known that this was the first week of school and stopped myself from making mistake number two...there's always a heat wave the first week of school. It's a given!