Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte 

This article first appeared in the August 21, 2010 edition of The Somerville Times

Even though I have been out of school for over 33 years, there is something about this time of year that makes me nervous. I write about this condition every year because it is a recurring ailment. It’s like a rash that returns once a year at the same time. Although I know the importance of school and education, and all that jazz, I still get butterflies in my stomach around the middle of August. School still makes me uneasy. I have also been having the same dream for years. I am still in high school trying to graduate. In the dream, I am usually in my pajamas, and there is a teacher tormenting me.

Some parents can’t wait for the kids to return to school. A lot of families have paid dearly to keep their children in camps or in day care during the past couple of months. Summer vacation to me means I don’t have to make snacks, tell the kids to go to bed, or try to get them up in the morning. If they want to sleep until noon, who cares. It is a vacation for me too. And now it is almost over. Soon it will be back to the old routine of making sure there are plenty of clean clothes, no dirt behind the ears, and an ample supply of zip lock bags for snacks.

My boys have already started the grim countdown to school. Summer reading projects have to be finished and some more new school clothes need to be bought. There is a tone of gloom in the kid’s voices and I feel their pain. The little guy mentioned that this summer there was no “big trip” like in past summers. Last year they went to Busch Gardens in Virginia. This year they had to suffer at our campsite in New Hampshire.

The return to school was always an emotional pot hole that I knew I was going to fall into every year. When I was walking through Wal-Mart on Saturday, it really hit home. There were Back to School signs everywhere. The school supply aisles always made me feel a little pain in the pit of my gut, as did the school clothes section. I still recall the drudgery of trying on school shoes. I had flat feet so I had to wear hideous black leather, style-less shoes. My mother always bought me pants that made the inside of my legs itch. Style was never an issue when school clothes shopping was concerned. If it fit, and my mother approved, I wore it. Kids today are lucky. They get to come school shopping and pick out their own duds. My entire 4-year high school wardrobe cost less than two pairs of my son’s sneakers.

When I was in school, some of the teachers were very mean. Some thought they were hard guys. We had dress codes and strict rules to abide by. No wonder I get bad feelings around this time of the year. For 8 years I was in a prison known as parochial school with nuns as guards. A couple of those nuns we had could replace Vince Wilfork on the Patriots. It is no wonder I have bad feelings about those three words, back to school.

I do have pleasant memories of my years as a substitute teacher in Somerville. It was like the inmates running the asylum. I am glad I was a fair sub, because over the years I have run into many former students. Some are very big and quite tattooed. I am happy I wrote all those bathroom and hall passes.

I will be dropping off and picking up two kids at two different schools for the first time in years. One of the happiest feelings I get is seeing my kids walking out of school heading for the truck, with the school day behind them. I wish summer vacation could last forever. I hope all the school kids out there make the most of every last minute of their final days of freedom.