School days

These were the days when school children start getting really antsy for summer vacation. They can see it coming and they can taste the freedom of the months ahead and they get excited about the future. I know how they feel. I remember sitting in classrooms, watching the lawn mower floating back and forth across the huge expanse of playground, and when the teacher would crank open the windows to get some fresh air into the classroom that wonderful smell of freshly mown grass would float in, an almost torturous thing.

We couldn't wait to get outside and head home for the day, knowing we could stay outside until dinner and homework intervened. There's nothing quite like the fresh air of spring coming into a house that's stale from the months of being closed up and shut tight. It's invigorating and titillating. It's coming and we can almost taste it in that wonderful warm spring air. I feel badly for the kids sitting in those same classrooms today. The schools have changed so much since I attended them that its hard for me to even recognize which ones might have been mine so many years ago, but I know my grandsons are sitting in about the same places I once did, and soon they'll be smelling the same heady aroma of that freshly mown grass. And I feel for them because I remember so well.