The Back to School Groove I just want to get one thing out of the way first. People have been asking me why I don’t comment on the California gubernatorial race in this column. Well, for one thing, after being the editor in chief of a national political satire magazine for a couple of years, I’m burned out on that stuff, and also, I’m about as apolitical as a person can be. But I will briefly comment. The funny thing to me is this: they call a race for senate a senatorial race and a race for president a presidential race. So why do they call a race for governor a gubernatorial race? My only comment on the whole mess is this: Let’s get it over with, and may the best guber win. Speaking of things they’re neglecting up there in Sacramento, I’m glad that we’re finally back to school. You can hear a pin drop around my house, even on the carpet. I don’t know about your kids or grandkids but mine scream and laugh and run up and down the stairs 10 hours a day in the summer. Plus, I have this border collie on the deck above my office going crazy with his herding instincts running back and forth and slamming into windows trying to get his little flock together and marching in a straight line. The trouble is, they’re running back and forth behind the glass where he can’t get to them, so he’s whining and whimpering all the time he’s running back and forth. And now there is not a speck of paint left on that part of the deck and the wood is worn smooth. Now that school is back in session, the dog lies there with a sad look on his face—an unemployed border collie is not a happy camper. But the kids are happy, and they love their new teachers. Only once since we have been up here has one of my kids not liked his or her teacher. That’s a pretty good record and probably a good indication of the caliber of teachers we have up here. My little one (second grade) even says his teacher is “too nice,” whatever that means. But this is a kid who, after a sterling year in first grade, volunteered to go to summer school just because he found out that his beloved first grade teacher would be teaching some of the classes. And my daughter, who is in sixth grade, still runs up and hugs her third grade teacher whenever she sees her. You hear a lot of talk about how many teachers in the state are unqualified. I don’t hear that up here. I mean, my son’s kindergarten teacher was a chemist! They learned things from her in there that I didn’t learn until junior high school. His kindergarten teacher was the only adult who was invited to his sixth birthday party, and she came—and the party was held at our house more than a month after the school year was over. I think she must also have fit into the “too nice” category. I wish we would have had these kinds of teachers when I was growing up. We had a sixth grade teacher who I still count as the crabbiest woman I have ever met in my life. Of course, now that I understand physiology a little better, I have to give her a break, since she was 56 years old at the time, and was probably just “going through a phase” as my mom would have called it back then. That teacher used to call in the vice principal to paddle students more often than any other teacher in the school. It was his job, but you could tell he didn’t like doing it. On the last day of school, we threw her a 56th birthday party. Somebody switched around the numbered candles on her cake to 65 to give her the hint to retire. She was yelling at people trying to find out who did it because she thought the implication was that she looked old. I saw who did it but I didn’t tell. It wouldn’t have done any good to tattle anyway, because who are you going to call in to paddle the vice principal? One thing good about getting the kids back to school is that it gets you back into a familiar routine. At 7:45 a.m., I take the girl to school at Lake Gregory Elementary, go to the post office, pick up the mail and then go home. At 1:45 p.m. I go to the grocery store, pick up something for dinner, drive to the school and then pick her up and take her home. If it’s hot, we might stop off for a Slurpee on the way home. My wife has a similar routine at Grandview, where my son goes to school. I like the routine because in the summer you’re all over the place and you feel like your life is in chaos. Now my wife and I have homework every night, so there is finally some discipline again in our lives.
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