Maybe I'm just playing hookey.
I haven't been at home on the first day of school in 18 years. Considering I graduated in 2005, I thought August 28, 2006 would feel like every other day. After all, I wasn't enrolled last year at this time, either. I still lived in Edinboro, though, so I tricked myself into thinking that I was still a college student whose classes were cancelled everyday. I still bought my bitter coffee from Rose Hall's food court, and I lived in dorm-style off-campus housing. My boyfriend had another year of classes, and my best friend hadn't yet dropped out and gotten married. My former Shafer Hall companion, Pudlak, lived half a mile away and visited campus like he was a student, even though he graduated before me. And if I needed groceries I had to jump on the Edinboro Express to Walmart. But today I'm at my family's house -- not a small college town that will soon be buried beneathe feet of snow -- and my baby brother is the one having morning coffee at the cafeteria (or rather, coffee at his apartment and spaghetti at the cafe) and class at 11 a.m. I'm not sure what to do with myself; even my 6-year-old cousin is in school -- second grade. Does that age match her grade correctly? Wonder what I did when I was a tot? Actually, now that I think about it, I believe I was in school at age 2 1/2 or 3. Preschool -- New Horizons? Yes, I think so. I can see the classroom. They made me be a tomato in a play. Perhaps that is when my love of theatre began. Then the next year was more preschool at Holy Family. I remember that classroom, too. I went to school with my mother's-best-friend's son, Tony. And one day we all made stone soup. I think there was a bookfair, too. At least I don't have to buy textbooks this year.