Back To School
I was driving this morning and realized quickly that it was back-to-school day in my town. Kids and backpacks, parents following, troves and gaggles of friendships moving toward a new year. It acted as a double throwback for me. I remember the days of my youth, but also the days of my kids’ youth. There are no back-to-school days for me until I have grandkids.
I loved getting my school supplies in order every year. I was a real paper nerd. This means I had notebooks and filler paper over the summer because I liked to write. But school notebooks were different. You had to get the right pencil pouch; the one I preferred locked into the jaws of the binder so my pens and pencils were inside of my corduroy-adjacent holder. My love for college-ruled filler paper is still intact.
The yellow dividers with their tips to hold your awkwardly written subjects for the year. The way you would fold the written divider tab inside of its colored casing was an adventure. Science was green. History, blue. English, red. Yellow, I can’t remember. Maybe it was school-year dependent. I never had a divider tab for Typing, but it would have been cool if I had typed that one.
I can’t imagine what today’s youth think about their first-day outfit. I don’t think I used to overthink it, but I surely didn’t underthink it either. You want the comfort of something worn, but you also want to present a new you. It can be a morning calamity if you don’t plan ahead. When I moved from Brooklyn to North Hollywood to start eighth grade, this was a North Star moment. I have no idea what I wore, but it was probably something my mom picked out for me.
From first to seventh grade, I went to the same school with the same kids. There was less pressure to be this new version of you. As pre-teens, we all grew over the summer, but we didn’t have to present the wisps of our first mustache. We all cared and didn’t care at the same time because we had established a level of comfort. I thought less about my outfit.
The kids all looked so excited this morning. Maybe it’s because they know that no teacher will assign homework on the first day. Maybe it’s because they want to show off their new kicks. Maybe they are just happy to be out of their parents’ reach for a change. School is a form of freedom, but also a very tight restriction. Having to ask to use the bathroom makes you feel powerless.
I used to pick out my kids’ outfits for the first day when they were younger. I tried so hard to make it something that would make them feel fresh. They changed schools a few times. I know that didn’t make it easy on them, but they both made friends pretty quickly. In middle school, it became harder because the modern version of middle school kids was more assholey than expected.
Boarding school was different for me. I was already living there by the time school started. My first roommate was the quarterback on the football team. I still felt out of place, and occasionally, out of body. A gangly sixteen-year-old hoping not to wake up with a pimple on my nose. There is no way to hide a pimple on your nose.
Other kids in school thought I was solemn because I never smiled. I was uncomfortable around so many people. I didn’t like the classroom stress and rigidity. My kids started at Montessori because of this. Hoping not to get called on is all you can think about until you get interested in relationships. I have no idea how many times I got called on when I was thinking about Juli White in middle school in California, but it was a lot. She didn’t know I existed.
When I went to my freshman year of college, I packed my car so full of stuff that I couldn’t see a thing out of the rearview mirror. Both of my parents came to drop me off, even though I drove myself. My mom knew she wouldn’t see much more than this in my life. I knew it too. We drove from Babson to Boston University together so they could drop me off to see a friend from camp. College had a different vibe.
When I transferred colleges after my sophomore year, I moved in with my stepbrother in Bloomfield, Connecticut. We lived together for a year until he high-tailed it for ASU and fled the cold. You have no worries on your first day living with your best friend. My mom had just died, and I was lost in a sea of despair and utter loneliness. I needed the constant rhythm of friendship. I may have worn Zubaz pants to school a few times that year.
When I went to law school, I think I wore a yellow polo on the first day. I had a shaved head, thick muscles, a goatee, and two earrings. I guess I thought the yellow polo would temper my thugosity. I had long eyelashes, so maybe that would help. Law school was no different from middle school, except that everyone chose to be there. We were still like dogs sniffing around for the right scent.
© Jonathan Greene, August 31, 2026
