It is quite mind-boggling to remember the school clothes shopping I did with my mother back in the early 1960s. I mean, we did it at Schenectady's three (yes, three) downtown department stores -- malls didn't exist yet -- and for the most part, I remember wearing long-sleeved shirts, plaid wool kilts, cardigan sweaters and high socks with my brown leather-soled shoes. And this wasn't a uniform, just the kind of clothes girls wore to public school back when it was actually cool or cold in September. (In the summer I got to wear shorts or jeans, but I don't remember wearing them to school.) I remember my first trip on the school bus; all the first-graders sat on the long back seat, and somebody said, "let's tell everyone how old we are." So all the kids chirped up "six" or even "seven" until it got to me, and I said "five-and-a-half" and everyone stared at me like I had a dreaded disease. Being younger and often pushed ahead academically was an interesting dynamic all through school.
I thought of the heavy woolen back-to-school clothes this week as the northeast was suffering through another abnormally hot stretch. Most schools don't have air-conditioned classrooms in this part of the world, so I gather that 80's and 90's and clanking old room fans are a nearly unbearable way to start a school year. Some leaves are starting to turn, but the nights aren't getting chilly enough to really create a colorful forest palette. Maybe we are in for another year of shriveling brown. This is, of course, not something to shrug off...it is intimately connected to the floods in Texas and Florida, and the utter devastation in Puerto Rico. Someday, perhaps we will all finally wake up and say, "what was our first clue?" When kids stopped wearing wool to school.
In a few days, the forecast is calling for cooler weather. I'm praying that a lot of things cool off with the temperatures.
