School and Storms...both are calm

Yesterday was the first day of school. I loved sitting around and listening to my boys give the run down of their day at dinner last night:

DS 1 was there to offer advice to his younger brothers since he's been where each of them are.

DS 2 had his first day of classes at the community college. He's dealing with a couple of things there...

* How do you borrow a pencil from someone who is the same age as your parents?

* Or worse yet, get their number to form a study group?

* What does it mean when the prof introduces himself and notes that this is his last semester of teaching and he wants everyone to know where his nitro pill is in case he has a heart attack in class?

* How do you keep from looking like a "know-it-all" when the speech teacher talks about knowing your audience and says "obviously no one in this room would understand if Einstein stood up here and explained the theory of Relativity"? DS 2 said he kept picturing every movie he's seen of college classrooms with the kid who always has his hand in the air. And he physically held his own hand down! (Don't get me started on this sort of thing.)

* How do you handle it when a peer that graduated with you from high school says, "Wow, I'm surprised to see someone like YOU here! I mean you were one of the top students at (our)HS!" DS 2 didn't explain that this is just a stepping stone for him while he waits for admission to the other school.

Then there was DS 3 who had a pretty good first day of 9th grade. As you might expect, the biggest issue for a new high schooler is whether they'll know anyone when they get there. It seems like he connected with someone in most of his classes and most importantly in lunch! A few of his observations:

* My classes are spread all over campus! As he showed us the map, DS 2 had a good laugh because they are QUITE as spread out as DS 3 might have made them.

* I don't know WHERE my locker is! And there's not time for me to go there anyway!

* It's EARLY to get up and go to school! He's TIRED!

* There's only 719 more days that he'll have to get up that early!

DS 4 had a great day in fourth grade. He had dance for his special on day one. He knows a couple of kids in his class and enjoyed connecting with some of his "old friends" at the school. Of course he'd be grateful if we'd do SOMETHING about the wasps that are outside the FRONT door of his classroom. Thank God I was able to tell Sandy about his wasp issues. She said when she announced to the class that they'd be using the back door to stay away from those pesky critters, A breathed a HUGE sigh of relief!

For me, it was a typical day one. We usually have a few Kindergarteners that we have to chase. Yesterday I got to chase E. He is a darling little boy who has a very pregnant mother and a father in Iraq. As he layed under the classroom table screaming, he told me, "I don't think I can make it!" You should have seen his eyes when I put my hand on my own head and said, "I don't think I can make it either!" Of course, for me, it was because we were hunched under a little Kindergarten table!

Anyway, he finally came out and ended up having a guidance counselor escort him through the day. (Forgive my humor, but this counselor just got surplussed to our elementary from a high school. All I could think was, "Wow! She may be bagging groceries at the local Publix by Wednesday!" I'm not sure chasing K students is what she thought SHE'D be doing for a living!)

So, as we sit here listening to the wind whistle through the trees rather gently, I am going to catch up on some filing that I needed to get done.