The Best Part of Going Back to School: or the intersection of August, money, and depression

August is a big month for Pithy—involving preparations, taking stock, saying goodbye, saying hello—we’re quite confident that we won’t be ready but that it will happen anyways. Much of the first two weeks of the month is largely devoted to denial, that August comes after July—what the hell happened to June? No one—not even Hermione—is so psyched for school that they forget the mournful afternoon spent accomplishing the studied motions of nothing. We live the summer days down to the last weekend of the last week, down to the dusk of summer.

Although summer is only goodness, moving forward is not without its excitements, which brings Pithy to the third best part of school (after, of course, the summer and Christmas breaks): back to school shopping. It’s exhilarating—the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, the ecstasy of purchase—the truly competitive American spirit of the check out lane when a cashier opens another register. Pithy is tempted to buy things that history tells them they probably won’t use: pencils (they prefer pens or eversharps when they actually have to resort to physically writing something without the computer), lunch boxes, glue sticks—the odds of going into a store for “a loaf of bread” and only coming out with a loaf are about three million to one. The season inspires the imagination—we can write if off as a tax deduction…now where were those jeans? Do they come in extra-medium?

Pithy is learning the difference of college summers and high school summers—that a high school summer was time set apart to earn tuition and as much school shopping money as we wanted to work for—our return to the halls of education could be as glorious or shabby as we wanted it to be. College summer affords no such time, barely having the time to make rent, car, grocery, and gas payments, while trying to prepare for the bill due on the first day of class. Textbooks stack up. Keeping positive, Pithy refuses to let growing up steal the shine from the sacred renewal of backtoschool. However, and however hard we protest, it’s less shiny this year. The budget word reminds us of the mathematical confirmation of our suspicions each month. The experience, we are told, is supposed to educate from all angles—that lessons come from many avenues—most of the important ones having little to do with a classroom. I guess we will see if this lesson is mastered or not when Pithy comes to themselves outside a shopping mall, disoriented, thinking, "what have I done?"