First Day of School

Monday, August 13th was Taylor and Hale's first day of school. We had all anticipated this day soon after arriving in Missouri. Anticipated it because we realized there was no one around here for the girls to get to know, except for the senior citizen crew that resides on our street. They are friendly enough, but I don't think they'd make good spend the night material. Except for maybe Vicki. As long as she brought her dog. She seems about as air headed as Taylor.

We had open houses for each school the week before. For those who don't know, Taylor is going into the seventh grade and Hale the fifth so they are at different schools. Open house went okay for the most part. Taylor's school is pretty big compared to where we came from. There may be about 800 kids in her school. It's 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. All of the halls are divided into grades which is pretty neat. There is hardly ever any interaction between the grades. The only interaction may be foreign language, band and choir. But even PE is grade specific. I like that. During Taylor's open house, all the new kids and parents were separated and taken on a tour of the school. There were about 7-8 new kids including Taylor. Tom and I were both there. As our guide was taking us around she stopped at the choir room. She asked if anyone was in choir (Taylor is) but no one motioned that they were so Tom held Taylor's hand up and said, "she is". That really embarrassed her. Taylor's face is normally a shade of pink but her face got truly beet red. I noticed a boy was really watching her hard. He thought it was very funny and was smiling during this brief interruption. He looked at her a little longer than anyone normally would. After the tour advanced, i told Taylor about what i witnessed to tease her. I thought the boy was very cute and thought she would, too. He has this kind of surfer, what's up dude look to him, (not the Jeff Spicoli look).The tour ended and that was that.

The day started early. She was up at 5:45. Her bus comes at 7:03. That's and entire hour sooner than in Virginia. She got up though on her own and got ready for school. (During the summer, we were lucky to see her out of sooner than 10:00.) She left with her dad walking her to the bus stop. That was not cool with her. He only to walk her half way though. As soon as the bus stop became visible and she saw there were kids already there she made him leave. There were about 6 boys and two girls. No wonder she couldn't find anyone to hang out with during the summer. At 7:15 she comes home. The bus never showed up and school starts at 7:15 so I took her to school. This is funny because she learned where all of her classes are coming from where the bus drops them off, not where parents drop kids off. She had no idea where to go. She said it took her about 15 minutes to find her hall.

At some point that morning she went to the school store to purchase two locks. One for her locker and one for her PE locker. Normally, she would have used lockers last year in sixth grade, but her school was being renovated and there were no lockers. This was her first year using lockers and the typical combination locks associated with school lockers. So she purchases her locks and puts one on her regular locker, backwards. I don't that stood out in her mind at the time. When it was time for lunch she returned to her locker to get her lunch but she couldn't get her lock open. She asked a teacher for help (which I'm still stunned about) and the teacher couldn't get it open. The teacher calls for the custodians and they couldn't get it open so they decide they have to cut it off with bolt cutters. So they cut it off and Taylor opens it to find it's not her locker. She never realized the way to distinguish your locker from all of the lockers that look identical with all of the other locks that look identical was to look at the number at the top of the locker. Harsh lesson learned. I make her carry around $5 for the poor guy whose lock got cut off.

So far, as this is Thursday, school seems okay for her. One friend she's made in the neighborhood I have yet to meet. I hope there's not a reason for that. But i think she's going to fit in fine. And by the way...the cute surfer dude is in about three of her classes. He's even asked her to be his class partner. She's says he's excessively hyper and is a dork. I see love in the air.

Now Hale...she is my social butterfly. She could argue with a rock or make friends with it, which ever she was int he mood for at the time. Her open house was a little disorganized. That day it was 100+ degrees. The open house was at 2:00. We got there at about 1:45. The doors were locked. They did not open the doors until exactly 2:00. They did not have a new to the school tour as the middle school did so we had no idea where we were going when we got there. During the summer when we registered, there was construction and we were not allowed to walk around. The first thing we encountered when we walked in was a teacher whose boobs could have been a shelf for her chin. Sometimes you can just tell when they're fake. It's not like they were huge they were just out there it seemed for all the little kids to see. She did little to conceal them with the tank top and the half unbuttoned button down shirt she was wearing. And the lipstick was hideous as well. I think if I see her like that again, I will complain. Or I can just send Hale to go tell her she's got too much skin showing. She does that to me when my shirt is shorter than the waist line of my pants.

So we finally find our way to Hale's class. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Benac. Pronounced bee-nack. I was hoping for some french twist to it, but it's just as redneck as the beer guzzlers at the soccer park. Bee-nack. She seems nice enough though. Spent allot of time with me, knowing Hale was new, answering all of my questions even though she had lots of other parents. That was thoughtful. I just hope she can contain Hale's mouth. Hale's open house was much quicker than Taylors, thankfully. I will never wear flip flops to another elementary school again. Once we left I asked Hale if she spied anyone she thought she could make friends with. She said she did. I asked if she talked the person and she said no. When she came home from school on her first day, she proclaimed, "I have five new friends." I asked her if the girl she had spied before was one of them, she said it was and that she was the best one so far. Turns out, she lives pretty much right behind us. Her first day home, not ten minutes after she got home, the phone rings. I thought i was just Tom checking to see how their day went, but it was Mattie checking to see if Hale could play. She called another three time int he next fifteen minutes. She must have been checking to see if the phone number was real. After she finished her homework she went out to play with Mattie. Mattie rode her bike to our house to get Hale and to take a tour of our house. When she rode up, i could swear it was Hale. They look just like each other. Except if at all possible, Mattie has longer skinnier legs than Hale.

All in all, school has been great. Come September, I may have another new "First Day of School" posting as Tom will be starting his first days of Washington U. Then we may have "Tracey's First Day at the Mental Ward."