The First Day of School, Believing the Science, and Anecdotal Evidence
The first day of school ends the social experiment of one side of the road being business as schools across it where shuddered and forbidden
This morning resumed what, for most of my adult life, has been ritual from August to June of each year. Children have to get to school. Not semi-sit-up and log on to their laptops, but actually get up and go to the school building. This is the first time in over a year they have done so, due to the closing of schools because of the Covid-19 pandemic. So long, in fact, one of my children will be starting in a building she’s never been in as a student since she — like several hundred others at her school — graded up to the high school in the interim period. Others graduated virtually, like my oldest did from college some months after her school was shuttered and arrangements were made for seniors to complete the work they were denied in class virtually.
The thing about the public school district my children are in is the hub of this educational wheel is located such all of the social aspects of the last year were on full display. The high school and one of the feeder elementary schools (which my children attended) are on adjacent property. Right across the street is a shopping center, the nearly omnipresent layout of an anchor store with attached strip mall that seemingly plagues every growing area these days, with outparcels that constitute a Mickey D’s, chain drug store, and two more strip malls. These are not to be confused with the other shopping center, consisting of an anchor grocery store and strip mall, which share a parking lot with another strip mall catty-corner and a half mile away and bordering the other side of the school property. This, I’m told, is progress. Huzzah for that.
Anywho…
That anchor grocery store is a daily visit, the one that I use the most, and as someone who cooks and uses food as self-therapy is very much one of my happy places. Most of the workers there know me, even masked up, since I’m there so often. Now that the first day of school has belatedly arrived, I’ll no doubt be there even more, since the convenience of passing by so many good eats is irresistible. Having lived in this community for a while it is more common to stop and talk to someone I know than…
