Sunday, August 17, 2025 at 3:27 PM

I will always remember those last days of summer holidays, or as they call it in America, vacation, and also the first day of being back in school. The last thing on your mind while on your vacation was school. You were out of the city, in the countryside or out at the cayes, having amazing adventures, making new friends, swimming and fishing and learning to ride a bike or horse. Your innocence was still intact, and those holidays were a reprieve from reality, in many ways. There were fewer rules during that period. Clocks didn’t exist; your only clock was your stomach, letting you know that it was feeding time, time to eat. You were a child, so you did childish things.

Of course, not everyone could go on vacation. Some of the kids spent the entire summer at home in the city. Somehow, they found ways to enjoy their summer also. But those days will always be memorable for many of us. We were young and free and, at least for me, the weather didn’t matter. If it rained all day, I’d read all day, sometimes enjoying myself more, living vicariously through the experiences of Tom Sawyer or Pip or David Copperfield—the Dickens character, not the magician.

Then summer ends and it’s back to school. You were excited because everything was new again; new class, new shoes, new clothes, new books, and that pretty teacher was going to be yours for a full year. Of course, during that first week back to school you were still going through summer withdrawals, but by the second week, one was back to the reality of time and schedules and discipline and learning and meeting new classmates, as some of the old ones were left behind. I always felt sorry for them.

It’s a different world we are living in now. Parents are more stressed because everything is so expensive. Outfitting a child for school now includes the purchase of expensive clothes and books and bags. Oh, and let’s not forget all that new technology that parents have to invest in. AI is there to help the teachers impart information, so in my opinion, learning has changed a lot. I’m not implying that my schooldays were better, just different. Discipline, for example, is not the same. We were afraid to not excel because we were punished by our teachers. We couldn’t misbehave in class because we would be punished. Even the bullying was different. The stronger boy or girl would pick fights with the weaker boy or girl they didn’t like, or get along with. Today it’s cyber bullying; the sound of that word itself is ominous. As a small, skinny kid, I was smart enough to have a big boy as a friend; you know, for protection. But today, teachers and schools can only do so much to keep a wayward child in line. You have to be worried about incurring a parent’s wrath if their kids get a bad grade or are disciplined. Wat a ting!

I know that children don’t realize that those grade school days will probably determine the rest of their lives. That it will be the last period of their innocence, especially these days. I didn’t realize it until I grew up and found out how adulthood and responsibility change everything. It is a time when we take everything for granted and expect so much from our parents and families. A time when we feel immortal.

I miss those days.

Glen