BUCKING THE SYSTEM: FROM SUMMER LAZINESS TO PRE-SCHOOL CRAZINESS

Back-to-school season brings back fond memories of Garanimals, Buster Browns and the quest for the perfect lunchbox.

Kids love summer break. From early June until late July, they get to stay up late and sleep in the next morning. They can stay outside all day if they want to, and some days, if they aren't very active, baths are optional.

Moms also love the summer, because they don't have to worry about getting grouchy kids out of bed and dressed before 7:30 a.m. It's also the only time of year adult males volunteer to cook.

But alas, summer, like trouble, doesn't last always. The beginning of August means back-to-school season has begun, and parents and kids will work themselves into frenzies trying to be prepared.

My family had lots of back-to-school rituals. The first thing we did was begin a series of specialty shopping weekends. One weekend we'd buy necessities, like shoes, socks and underwear. Another weekend we'd look for school clothes. These were not to be confused with our play clothes, which were last year's school clothes that no longer fit.

Finally, we'd head out looking for school supplies. This included paper, pencils, a school box (or glorified cigar box), and the ever-important lunchbox.

Carrying your lunch to school was the cool thing to do when I was in elementary school. It didn't matter what you brought to eat, although you were REALLY cool if you had the brand new drink boxes or individual packages of potato chips. This changed in junior high, where bringing your lunch to school meant you couldn't afford to buy the school's lunch.

In my school, ALL of the cool kids brought their lunch, so the lunchbox was very important. You might as well have brought a knapsack if you had to carry the workingman's lunchbox: a big, black, plastic monstrosity.

To be a card-carrying Cool Club member, you had to have the latest in lunchbox technology. This meant a primary-colored plastic concoction featuring the most popular action-figure-cartoon-character-television show of the day. Sometimes I made the cut; sometimes I didn't.

Clarissa and I could never get Mom to alternate from this shopping schedule, nor did she deviate from the strict bedtime hours she enforced the two weeks prior to the first day of school. No more staying up waiting for the last showing of "Grease 2" on HBO: Schooltime hours were in effect.

When we really were feeling our oats, or just in a fit of pique, we'd ask Dad to take us shopping. Those were always fun days, because Dad had no shopping sense when it came to his two daughters, and he could be cajoled into buying anything. He was also good for a shopping-day meal, unlike Mom, who seemed immune to the lure of the many fast-food restaurants she passed by on our way home.

Of course, Dad didn't ever get the stuff we needed. Like most men, he believed bigger was better, which meant we came home with industrial-sized bottles of Elmer's glue that we never finished using.

Once we arrived home with those kinds of purchases in tow, several things would happen. Dad would get yelled at for his purchases, Riss and I would get reprimanded for "letting your daddy buy that mess" and Mom would let us reap the rewards for our actions, which meant we'd be stuck trying to fit a king-sized bottle of glue into a kid-sized cigar box.

I wish all of the students a prosperous and knowledge-filled school year. To the parents, I say this: Good luck with your pre-school craziness. Be on the lookout for the best buy and the perfect lunchbox, and give your children a say in what they think is a good purchase. After they've had their say, go ahead and buy what you picked out.

But please, don't buy the workingman's lunchbox.

~Tamara Zellars Buck is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.