Back to School with no Rodney Dangerfield

I am back. It is the day after Labour Day up here in Canada. It can only mean one thing, back to school. The Lad started middle school today. Back in the day, it was called junior high school and consisted of grades 7, 8 & 9. Of course, we had a grade 13 back then. Today, there is no grade 13 or OACs, so high school goes up to grade 12 and begins at grade 9. There is no junior high, just middle school which is just grades 7 & 8.

Anyway, I can only look back to when I started junior high back in 1976. Like the Lad, I was in the same school and class as most of my elementary school friends. It provided a level of comfort as I became friends with the people who had gone to the other area public school. The funny thing is that among my friends from high school, most became my friends in junior high. In fact, I only really speak to one person from elementary school. Two, perhaps, but one was a friend from nursery school and we were never in any classes in elementary school. In fact, we only really reconnected as friends in grade 9, in you guessed it, junior high.

I get to relive, through the Lad, those awkward pre-puberty into puberty years, that lead into the gawky teen years. I saw one of the Lad's friend's older brother recently. The kid is 14 or 15 and is in complete teen-geek mode. He has the cheek acne (I hope that the Lad can avoid that but there is no guarantee given my skin, my brother's, my father's and the Wife's), the long, gawky limbs and the mono-syllabic grunt responses as a Neanderthal (without the full on body hair, at least that I witnessed). Then again, this particular teen, was a geeky, very bright, obnoxious pre-teen, so some of the geeky teen traits are not necessarily a teen thing but go much deeper in terms of socialization and empathy.

I know I was obnoxious and the Lad is especially so. He fucking thinks he knows it all, yet when quizzed cannot come up with the answers. That is where I have him beat, I have been there and I feel what he feels. I can also question him and will press for him to answer the questions. It usually forces him to hear how inane his questions or positions can be. When he is correct, I will be the first to admit it and let him go. It is all about taking responsibility for his thoughts and actions. He does that and I have no issues. He makes a mess and expects somebody else to clean it up, we have a problem.

Well, that is all for today. We have finally had a run of great, sunny, dry weather. Where the fuck was this in July? Oh well, what can I do? Shit all. Ciao!