But I hate the first day of school. No matter how old I get--or how many years of schooling I put behind me--the first day makes me seven years old again. I'm the new kid, the one who gets tripped at the door by a mean girl whose scabby knees are not hidden by the folds of her smocked lilac dress. I'm the one who has to sneak in during the pledge of allegiance because her parents are not morning people. I'm the one who doesn't know where the bathrooms are and is too afraid to ask.
The first day makes me sick.
When I was in college, I mentioned this to a friend. My exact words were something like this: "No I don't drink orange juice on the first day of school because it makes me puke. You know what I mean?"
My friend suggested I just might have an anxiety problem. Ahh...perhaps.
Here are the things I am worried about (in no particular order):
- I will be unmasked as a fraud. This will be the day/the class/the year that people will find out that I have been pretending to be smart or interesting or informed. I will be totally unprepared.
- I won't make any friends. I was the new kid--several times. Once, my teacher pointed out to the class that she wanted them to be quiet like me. She didn't understand that was quiet because I had no one to talk to.
- I won't know where the bathroom is and I will be too afraid to ask.
Tomorrow evening, I am starting an informal class at the university extention school--four weeks of photography lessons. This is something I have wanted to do for some time. I only hope that I can force myself through the door.
Oh, I also hope the girl in the smocked lilac dress doesn't show up. I can't stand that kid.
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...BELL (as in Bellview)
an update on my photography class
What exactly was I so freaked out about? Why did I need my (little) sister to come into the building with me to find my room as if it were my very first day of school? Why did I not realize that this was going to be the kind of class where the person with the biggest, fanciest camera was also (always, inevitably) going to be the person who thought that the whole class would be devoted to teaching her which buttons to press? (Big round one on top.) Why didn't I see her temper tantrum coming? The screaming and stomping of feet when our teacher said that not every one had the biggest, fanciest camera and so he had to focus on theories of photography. The evil look she gave him when he suggested that he was more than a human instruction manual. And the hysterical near-tears fatalism of it all. Next time, I think I'll offer to let her use my point-and-shoot.
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