Back to school

This summer, around June, what started out as an ordinary trip to the mall turned into a major traumatic event. I was looking for a pair of shorts and, had I the courage, a bathing suit since it had finally stopped snowing here in Buffalo. I was wandering around, looking for a store that accepted empty Molson Canadian cans, when it hit me.

It was a sign, innocently disguised amongst a tidy display of fallen leaves, soccer balls, and chalkboards. It read: Back to School Sale.

Needless to say, I screamed bloody murder and dropped my trash bags, sending about three weeks' worth of hard-earned empty can currency rolling into Abercrombie and Fitch. The little blonde salesgirl, whose skimpy shirt indicated she was a "diva," gave me one of those acidic looks and said simply: "Ill-uh!" I didn't notice though, I was too busy running for my life, splashing through the fountain to the only safe place I could think of: the cookie stand.

After about three double doozies and a pretzel with enough butter on it to wax the Student Union floor, I stopped shaking and went home. It just wasn't worth the pain, and by now I'd donated all my cans to the Pre-Pubescent Skateboarders' Acne Fund.

By now, I suppose it's fair to say that Back to School time is upon us. In fact, I guess I'm a little late. I think after a certain amount of time at college you stop caring about your looks so much, but I should speak for myself. It occurred to me on the first day of class that I had become either old or frumpy, and perhaps both.

I was sitting in my uncomfortable little swivel chair, resting what little of my elbow I could fit on the sorry excuse for a writing desk in front of me and staring into nothingness, thinking about how many places I'd rather be when a young lady wandered into my field of vision. I'm sure she thought she looked nice, but to me she looked absolutely ridiculous.

She was wearing pants that were far too small and that clung to her hips for dear life, matched with a belt wide enough to make curtains. It dangled so far down her leg that I couldn't help but imagine it getting caught in a door or an escalator. She'd squeezed her bosom into a shirt that looked like it had been a sock in its last life and teetered atop shoes that looked more like cinderblocks than sandals.

I was sitting there smiling to myself, thinking how silly she looked when I noticed that the males in the class seemed drawn to her like moths to those blue things that fry the crap out of anything that gets close enough. I watched the dance and speculated how many of them she would ultimately decide to fry the crap out of. She seemed content to be in the middle of the swarm for the time being.

Looking down, it was no mystery why I was sitting with an empty seat on either side of me. Mesh shorts, an old Ministry t-shirt and plastic flip-flops were no match for all the underclassmen in their new Gap and J. Crew styles. Upon closer inspection I saw that I'd managed to doze off before class had even started, leaving a little puddle of drool on my notebook that I still haven't opened.

It was downhill from there. I started thinking about how soon I'd be graduating and not finding a job, and how soon after that I'd be getting wrinkles and going gray, and wondered if I'd be able to find someone who could tolerate plastic flip-flops and if I could find white ones to wear at my wedding that I hoped would come before I started losing my teeth.

I was jolted out of my nightmare by the professor wandering in wearing a tweed coat and pushing spectacles up onto a grizzled nose that boasted a thick white forest underneath it, and I knew it would be OK. I still had time.

I decided that my summer was much better spent lying around in the balmy, 40-degree weather, drinking large quantities of poison and (occasionally) working, rather than searching high and low for the perfect first-day-of-school outfit. Besides, I thought we'd left junior high behind.