NEW SHOES: A BTS STORY

No matter how old I am {and no, I won't be telling} I still feel a frisson of excitement this time of year. It starts end August, when I notice that there's a little chill in the morning air,  the sun arcs a little lower in the sky, and the sunlight casts a beautiful golden glow over everything.  It's back-to-school and the beginning of my New Year. You can have January 1st to start the new you, not me. I make no resolutions and join no gyms during that New Year.  The new school year is when I vow to do all those re's: reflect, renew, resolve.

I think I can trace my desire to reinvent at this time of year to back-to-school shopping with my mother. A new color palette would be selected- it would be a navy year, not a brown year? or plaid not stripes? or denim not corduroy?  {Sadly it was always black velvet mary janes and never the white, Marsha Brady go-go boots I coveted.}

The message was clear, it was a time that I could change my external appearance to reflect the new person I had become over the summer.  To define myself along the parameters that I chose. A red plaid lunchbox signalled how much I had matured, so much more worldly than the Scooby Doo I carried the year before. New notebooks, a box of 64 crayons with a built-in sharpener, folders, and college ruled notepaper {college!} held the promise that this year was going to be different {perhaps the year in which Sheldon Gomberg would notice me?} The year I would stop being shy, the year I would reign in kickball, the year I would win the school spelling bee?

It has been x-many years since I went to school, but I still feel the same anticipation, anticipation that I can make the changes that I choose.  So I take the time to reflect, to redefine-- and resolve to become the person I dreamed of being back when all I wanted was a plaid lunchbox and white go-go boots.