First and foremost, thank you for weekends, whenever they arrive, Sabbath or otherwise. Thank you for coffee and lunch breaks. For OSHA.
Thank you for this holiday.
Working people’s contributions aside, there’s a bigger significance to this weekend. This is back-to-school season, or as retailers have been saying since July 4, BTS.
Having somebody in school means packing lunches or slipping the lunch money into a pouch where asshole bullies can’t find it. Checking homework, first over the student’s shoulder and next via Google or our professorial friends who know we’re mangy at math. Disabling the snooze button, because the schoolbus maintains a tight schedule. Filling shopping carts at Target and Staples, in person or online.
Thank you, FedEx and UPS.
We don’t have anybody in school anymore, PhD candidate notwithstanding. Still, the rhythm of the seasons is guided not by the angle of the sun but by the bell or buzzer or tone for the first class of the day on the first day of the school year.
As former students, we all feel that tug. We’re conditioned from pre-K into the workaday world to shift gears on Labor Day.
Beaches close. So do carousels and Skee-Ball. Pizza doesn’t taste as good.
Politicians shift into eighth gear for Silly Season.
Of course it’s manufactured. Of course it’s Pavlovian or Skinnerian. The air really isn’t hissing out of the balloon (not with a near-heat wave kicking in).
That doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Because it sure feels real.
