Dreaming of Daisy

Chapter 4 - Flashback to First Week of High School

"She's as pretty as a picture
Every bit as funny as she is smart
Got a smile that'll hold you together
And a touch that'll tear you apart
When she's yours she brings the sunshine
When she's gone the world goes dark
Yeah she's heaven on the eyes
But boy she's hell on the heart, yea"

(Hell On The Heart  -Eric Church)

While there is a certain indiscernible excitement in the air, no sane student or teacher wants summer vacation to end. The vast majority of students barely have any crops to harvest over the summer, so the ensuing freedom is basically all encompassing. There's time for late night Italian ices, and numerous days for movie marathons. If you're still young, then there is also a strong lack of responsibility, or any other tether to reality. You're free to spend your days walking around the mall and looking repeatedly in the same three stores. The end of the school year is also distinctly different than the beginning.

Summer vacation sets in like the end of the cold war. As it first approaches, the discipline of the student body is maintained by a ferociously firm faculty. Yet, just like the end of the Cold War, you can feel its approach. In the hallways a restless undertone grows among the students. Each class, like a Soviet satellite state under the thumb of the academic regime. As the spring comes, the restlessness begins to haunt the halls and the institutional hierarchy. If you're a northern student, then the increasing temperature is another ominous sign of summers fast approach.

At some point in the last two weeks, the students stop pretending to listen, and the teachers stop pretending to teach. The writing is on the wall. The great experiment will end, and nobody, not even the administration can make it continue. The administrators, much like the communist party officials, must watch as the order starts to slip away from their grasp. Finally, the last bell rings, and the wall comes crashing down. It's done. Forgotten freedoms are returned, and millions must figure out how to live again, without constant supervision.

But, just as summer comes fast, so does a new school year. At some point in summer, students realize that while communism was bad, they do need some semblance of structure in their lives. Just as the hints of boredom start to grow, the school year is back upon you. The weeks leading up to it all give subtle hints. Your mom has bought you a new school uniform. The capitalist blue jeans and tank tops aren't approved state garb. The reading list required of you suddenly looks a lot longer on your bulletin board. You know the talking points, and know the administration won't check, so you take a gamble and don't read anything past the first chapter.

All those real goals you wanted to accomplish like learning an instrument, building a treehouse, and competing in a triathlon start to look like good tasks for the next summer. Then one day, you have to put away the flip flops and take off the tank tops one last time. Gone are the days of waking up at the crack of noon, and you suddenly realize how hard it is to fall asleep before midnight.

It's even harder to fall asleep if the next day, is the first day at a new school. The first day of high school.

James put on his new uniform. The slacks and crested polo of high school felt so much more distinguished than the blue pants, and red shirt of grade school. The Catholic grade schools James attended didn't have crested polos like those wealthy big city Catholic grade schools. With that strangely fresh uniform on, and a terrible nervousness in his stomach, James walked out the back door and down the driveway. It was a cool summer morning, and the birds were already out in force playing their morning melodies.

James took a left at the end of their short driveway, and walked down the side of the street. There weren't any sidewalks in this old suburban neighborhood. When he told people he lived in Hillcrest they always assumed his parents had money or were at least well off. The reality was his neighborhood was not one of those perfectly planned suburban stereotypes, and his parents both worked for a living. The neighborhood was a working class one, filled with jobs that paid enough, but not much more. His neighbors were factory workers, painters, and sales associates.