The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

You've seen the commercial. The dad dancing through the aisles of the office supply store, rejoicing that his kids are going back to school?

That would be me right now.

Two weeks from tomorrow, two of the three remaining public school age children will return to school. The third starts the next day, because she's a big shot high school sophmore.

Big shot high school high school sophmore is in for a treat. Luke Skywalker will be going to high school with her. Yep. You heard it right. Screampillar's 12 year-old brother gets to go to high school.

Middle School sucks. It's a fact of life. There is somthing about middle school that brings out the worst in some kids: they're rude, inconsiderate, crass, mean, disrespectful, and they smell. Sorry, just the facts here. My kids did stupid stuff in middle school, stuff that made me say "What in the world were you THINKING?" and the reality is  they weren't thinking. Most of them don't. They're too busy growing and a prodigious rate and establishing pecking order.

Pecking order usually works out like this: top of the heap are the beautiful people - the attractive non-smelly kids who look like they have it all together and don't dress like outcasts from Gilligan's Island -- athletic/cheerleader types. Next is the largest group: normal kids who don't stand out all that much, but aren't total rejects. The normal kids are followed by the outcasts: band geeks, drama kids, and dead last, the nerds (or smart kids).

Funny thing is, this largest group, the normal kids? They're the ones establshing the pecking order. They decide who the golden children are. They mock the band geeks and drama kids. They beat up the nerds. And every one of them wants to be one of the beautiful people.

My son is a nerd. He is smart. Nobody gets his jokes. He is very short. And shy. He doesn't care what clothes he wears, and often looks like an outcast from Gilligan's Island.  He likes his hair short, because that way no one bothers him about styling it. The most important part of his wardrobe is his backpack -- because it is required to carry 345 books that have nothing to do with his school assignments. He would get pounded into paste in middle school.

So I am grateful that he's going to high school.  There's a new program for scary-smart geeky kids like him, where he will find peers - true peers! Geeks like him.

And his big sister will probably throw him in a trash can before the first week is over.