September 11, 1985
The saying “practice makes perfect” does not always hold true. After sixteen years of getting myself ready for the start of a school year and six years of preparing my children, I’m still making a lot of mistakes.
This year I thought I had everything under control. We had made several trips to numerous stores in order to come up with the desired jeans, sweaters, charm necklaces, lunch boxes, notebooks, backpacks, tennis shoes, dangling earrings, expanding bracelets and gym clothes. Hair had been cut, route to the bus stop practiced and orientation attended.
All the “what to do if” warnings about strangers, dogs and missed busses and mother not at home had been reviewed.
As I snapped the first day of school picture for the album and waved good-bye, I thought maybe this would be my first perfect day of school.
Not so!! At the end of the day I soon learned the clothes we bought were much too warm and we had forgotten to purchase a lock for the gym locker, a big box of crayons and a certain kind of notebook.
It was obvious our carefree hair do was a little to carefree and we really should have stayed away from pastel tennis shoes.
The biggest problem came from my second grader. I had forgotten to tell her how she could get her hug-a-pet back pack out of the coat room in case of a fire. What’s a mother to do?
CCW