Autumn is coming and I find myself growing more excited by the day. It's not just the cooler breezes that please me so, it's also the way that nighttime comes sooner and yet slowly, kinda like your eyelids gradually grow heavier as you draw nearer to sleep. I love the way I feel like I need a light sweater or jacket, or even better, a soft and thick hooded sweatshirt. I get excited thinking about strolling through Central Park as leaves crunch under my feet. (I just hope that my autumn in New York is better than that sucky Richard Gere/Winona Ryder movie though. Ugh.)
Another thing: you look up and there is pink in the sky and then the next thing you know, a crescent winks at you from the purple-y black of the sky. Tonight I patrolled the streets, as the air was just too good and cool to coop myself up in a room. The Empire State building is lit up like a Firecracker popsicle, all red, white and blue, which kinda reminds me of summer's sticky sweetness, but even moreso it reminds me of school days and a cool breeze carries me from a rooftop in New York City all the way to a front porch in Dacusville ...
By this time we've been in school for almost three weeks and I can bet that I'm not yet accustomed to coming inside at the porch light's first flick. I am probably tearing up and down the street on my bike, jamming the breaks to slide and kick up dust, dirtying up the school clothes I was supposed to change out of immediately after school. But somehow, in the course of finishing off my afterschool pizza snack some tomato sauce found its way onto a shirt or a pants leg and so I figure, why bother changing into something fresh and clean when this is already dirty?
My homework has been done and easily so, besides, no teacher assigns projects until after the short labor day week is over and then it's bound to be some social studies time sucker. Fortunately I like social studies, unless this is third grade where I mistakenly got stuck in Ms. Head's class for some reason (probably that stinkin' Sandlappers show), and she decided to give me a D for my topographic map because the flour mixture crumbled as I was clumsily extracting it from the back seat of the car. Fortunately, Ms. Allen saw me struggling and therefore vouched that I had in fact completed quite the lovely project; but this won't be settled until after my bewildered tears will cause my mama to have to make an appearance, which will concern Mr. Cox just enough to get him to stop in and see what all the fuss is about, which means, Ms. Head will surely understand that I worked very hard on the project considering all things and that given my outstanding performance thus far in the class, is there any reason to believe that she did not complete the project as assigned? No. No, Ms. (BIG) Head there isn't. You should know that Danita is one of the finest students at Dacusville, and you should also know that Mr. Cox gives me a high five every day at some point which is very cool, especially when we're supposed to keep our hands by our sides and to ourselves.
But autumn comes quickly, as progress reports go out, farm days are held with tractor pulls and hayrides, the fall festival coincides with parents night and soon everything turns orange in time for Halloween - which is always a classically good time in the lunchroom for sure. "He did the mash. He did the Monster Mash. It was a graveyard smash." Who will dare walk through the streaming black tentacles, more commonly seen as trash bags on normal days ... and pass Mrs. Cisson who's witch outfit may not really be that much of a special occasion at all?
Oh, to be back there again. Idly watching Reading Rainbow during library and racing to get to the week's Caldecott selection before anyone else, getting stuck with dinging the triangle in Mrs. Lawton's music class while those less rhythmically inclined defy musicality with drums and tamborines, playing with that parachute in P.E. and anticipating the day when I'd be big enough to not have to shoot on the lowered basketball goals.
When it rains, no matter where I am, I can still smell those hallways in the older part of the school, musty with that mildewy smell and the odor of old books. I can still see raindrops trickle down the windows and hear the sloshes and squeaks of shoes on the linoleum, even as the hallway enforcer, Mrs. Foster with her autumn colored hair, yelled for us to wipe our feet and to stop running.
I miss it a lot, those Dacusville days. Every year in September it seems I long to return, just to retrace my steps down the front hallway, the back hall past Mrs. Wiles's office, around and down past the 6th grade classrooms and Ms. Micah/Harrison's art class, and past the back stairwell I couldn't take until 7th grade, but that's right outside where the ice cream is kept for recess on Fridays where 50 cents can buy you a taste of revelry unmatched any other day of the week. Nutty buddies. Yum. One splattered Mickey Mouse ear on the sidewalk 50 yards from the blessed playground is not so yummy and means you've just practically wasted at least 15 cents.
I miss tetherball and monkey bars, the concrete tunnels where we'd creep in to hide and spy and plot out all the ways we could taunt Ben, Ben, B-E-N, Ben who'd never be my boyfriend.
It all seemed so simple then. Mad minute times tables, Heads Up 7-Up, writing in cursive and Number Munchers and Oregon Trail. Knowing your day started around 8 and was over by 2:30.
Now my days start at 8 and don't end until 6:30 or 7. What is up with that, friends? I've swapped the cursive writing I spent years perfecting for a set of keys that sound like Sammy Davis Jr. just got a new pair of shoes. Somewhere along the line, I lost my mad minute zeal and it now takes me at least a minute to count on my fingers, or "air write out" additions and literally carry my one with an index finger in midair.
Mostly it'd be nice to call in tomorrow with the excuse: "I'm sorry, but I just couldn't decide fast enough whether I wanted to ford the Mississippi River or caulk the wagon and pray our way across, and then I had to stop and trade some supplies for some more bullets so I could shoot at all the buffalo and deer since I'm a really great shot, and unfortunately, I wasn't able to shoot as much as I would've liked because the stupid spacebar got stuck and basically, little Kimmie wound up starving to death so we had to berry (not bury because no one pronounces it like that) her and in all my grief and the desperate search for food, I died somewhere in between Oklahoma and Oregon, you know, of typhoid fever, so I couldn't possibly work today, it'd just be too much."