Ah, Labor Day weekend. The longest, sweetest weekend of the summer…except for that bitter aftertaste that reminds you that summer is, for all intents and purposes, over.
It’s time to go back to school.
As a kid, school started right after the Labor Day weekend, if it hadn't already. In May, the summer stretched out infinitely and every afternoon seemed to last for days, but by the end of August each day slipped by faster than the one before. The final weekend of summer was a last respite from that forward march.
While the summer being over was an almost universal bummer, there were also some good things about going back to school:
Labor Day weekend! Pool parties, barbecues, concerts at local parks, flag football games…or just watching a game on TV. There was always something spectacular going on over Labor Day weekend. Even the adults seemed to know this weekend called for a celebration. (Of course now, as an adult, I realize every 3-day weekend is cause for celebration.)
No more summer camp! Sure, most summer camps are awesome. But some of us got stuck in camps that were named things like Camp Happy-Fun Land, but should have been named Camp Death by Dodgeball. Regardless, by the end of August most of us are ready to never see a braided friendship bracelet or popsicle-stick-and-yarn memory keeper ever again.
School lunches! The stereotype of cafeteria lunches is that they’re bland and unhealthy. One of those is true. Do you remember the perfectly formulated chemical sensation of school-lunch pizza? Was there ever a superior tater-tot than a school lunch tot? Maybe this one is just me, because I had a brown bag lunch and so coveted what I was expressly forbidden to eat. But how to acquire the delicious, salty contraband?
The lunch swap! Because you told your mom you don’t like egg salad, but she packed it anyway. Because the vegetarian doesn’t want the school lunch chicken nuggets and is eyeing your PB&J. A culinary trading floor where pudding cups and tater tots were the Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) of their market—and the only crash was after having too much sugar—the lunch swap was a near-sacred institution of the school experience.
Your friends are back! Maybe they went to a different summer camp—Camp Lots of Fun and No Dodgeball or Braided Friendship Bracelets, for example. Or they were whisked away on a long family vacation, or simply lived too far away to visit very often during the summer. Whatever the reason, the first few days of school was always a great time to catch up with old friends and find out what they did over the summer.
From all of us at OttLite, we hope you have a happy and healthy Labor Day weekend! And a happy start to the school year!
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