Our kids start school on Monday, and this will be an especially big year for us — our son is moving to middle school (gulp!). Fortunately, he’s super excited and decided as soon as he set foot in the door that middle school was going to be awesome. That’s so much better than some other mindsets he could have! Of course, he might be thinking differently on Monday morning, but I’m hoping not.
I’ve joked about trying to keep him at elementary school for at least one more year. He knows I’m teasing, but I finally gave him the signal that I know he’s moving on in the world — I put a sticker in the back window of our Suburban.
A sitcker? Yes, a sticker — but it’s not just any sticker. It’s a static cling-type thing of the school’s initials. I’ve only had it since (ahem) the first week in May, when we went to parent orientation at the middle school. I joined PTO that night (like every mom should, IMO), and they gave me a membership card and the static-cling/sticker thing.
It’s been on my desk ever since, always managing to resurface no matter how many times it got buried under piles of other things. He asked about it a few times, but I never got around to putting it in the window. Now that we’re literally hours from reality, I decided it was finally time to make it official. (That’s right, no more denial allowed!)
One of the craziest (or maybe coolest) things is that my son is about to enter the world of the main character in the book I’m currently writing (though I’m writing about a girl — I wouldn’t ever pretend to know enough to figure out a middle school boy and write a coherent story!). I have plenty of vivid middle school memories of my own, but maybe he’ll actually help give me some new ideas. Just goes to show that the old adage is true — life is just fodder for writers.
Let’s just hope his experience is easier than what my character keeps running up against.
