Most of what I pretend to know in life can be traced to a sitcom. If it isn’t Seinfeld, it’s Mary Tyler Moore. If it isn’t Sex in the City, it’s The Brady Bunch.

That’s probably why, when my daughter came home from her first day of high school today and listened wistfully to her brother talking about his first day in junior high, I thought of the Brady Bunch episode when Marcia pretended she was sick on her first day of high school.

Frankly, I was surprised Carol and Mike fell for this but of course, Carol called the doctor, who of course made a house call and diagnosed, with a hearty chuckle, first-day-of-school-itis. You could hardly blame Marcia. A big wheel in junior high, she was now attending a high school where apparently she was the only student from her entire district and thus knew no one.

I’d be sick, too.

When her parents made her go the next day, her brother Greg said he’d introduce her to his cool, football player friends who all looked 35, right down to the receding hairlines. But Marcia was suitably impressed and trying too hard to be mature, she embarrassed Greg by telling one of his friends that she looked forward to the “intellectual stimulation” of high school.
(Note: While I am embarrassed that I remember this right down to the exact dialogue, I am also secretly proud and would be willing to bet big money that I am right.)

Anyway, Greg comes home humiliated at his wacky sister’s behavior – or maybe it’s her bell bottoms. Kidding, of course. Marcia was wearing a tasteful skirt and pumps. And he urges her to be herself, which she agrees to do, going back the following day and signing up for all eight clubs in the school until she finally tells her parents she has to be herself, so she’s sticking with the rugby club. Kidding again. She drops everything but ceramics as I recall.

I’ll have to remember to ask Amanda if her high school has a ceramics club and tell her to check the bulletin board.

You would have thought Greg would’ve been a little more patient with his sister, given his first day of high school a couple seasons earlier resulted in him demanding that his father give up his den and make it into a mod bachelor pad. Greg, too, was trying to be too mature, translating to his outfit of fringed vest, headband and shades, and he, too, was laughed off campus.

I find these stories to be instructive and am sure my kids will take some important lessons from them as they transition to their new schools.
And in the absence of a sitcom, I can always reflect on my own childhood, which often was funnier than The Brady Bunch.

Aside from the kid on the kindergarten bus who threw up out the window, I remember one other first day — coincidently my first day of high school — when I called my good friend Bari the night before to ask what she was going to wear.

This was of critical importance because designer jeans were just coming into vogue and it would be a little daring to wear them on the first day of school when all of our mothers would be horrified that we weren’t more dressed up. Bari assured me that the jeans would be saved for the second day of school, so I wore my powder-blue polyester pants with the narrow glittery belt and shimmery polyester blouse with the seascape design. Stunning, huh?
Except that Bari, in an apparent last-minute conference call with every girl from our junior high, elected to go with the Gloria Vanderbilt’s, thus leaving me humiliated. Really needed texting.

Despite all of this, I stuck with Bari the following day and when it was time to find our bus home, I decided that I would wait for her, even though she had a tenth-period class and I was finished after ninth. It was either that or board the wrong bus and end up having dinner in Morton Grove (not my suburb).

Trying to be casual, I passed by her class to make sure she was there and that I wouldn’t miss her when she came out. Then, with nothing else to do and still concerned I might miss her, I passed by her class again. Over the next 50 minutes, I would circle the first floor of the school and pass by the open door of her classroom approximately 43 more times until every kid as well as the teacher became acutely aware of me and giggled every time I walked by (naturally, I did not know this until Bari came out afterward and told me).

I am thinking that if my children are at all anxious over these next few days and weeks that these stories might calm their nerves and let them know that we’ve all been there and that eventually we all adjust and move on.
And maybe if they’re lucky, they won’t remember it in vivid detail 35 years from now.

Fall is a strange and harrowing time for me.

My birthday is in fall, but I’ve never had a problem with my birthday except that one moment of panic I had when I turned 27 and couldn’t remember how old I was until I did the math.
Football season is in the fall, which, given that I live in Chicago might explain this feeling of impending doom I have been experiencing lately. But then the Bears are full of hope, what with their new quarterback and everything, so that doesn’t really explain it.

Maybe it’s all this talk about superbugs, but I don’t think so since I have no idea what that means.

Nope, I think it’s just fall and the knowledge that no longer will my biggest decision each day revolve around which popsicle flavor to choose (no wait, that’s my son Alec’s biggest decision). But it’s definitely school starting and everything that implies – the hectic schedules, the responsibilities, the lack of family fun time (and oh, what a day that was).

With one child starting high school and the other, junior high, in a matter of days (see, now I’m nervous I’m going to forget which day it is, and my kids will miss their first days of school), there is anxiety aplenty. I believe this dates back to my first days of school and again, it’s probably my parents’ fault.

They never sent me to nursery school as they called it then. Either they forgot because I was the youngest of four or more likely, my mother did not want me to leave home. As a result, I was hardly prepared for my first day of kindergarten, which is why I remember everything in such vivid, terrifying detail, beginning with Ed, the bus driver, peeling me off my father’s leg and continuing as we pulled up to school and someone whose name I had not yet learned, throwing up out the window.

School is simply nerve-wracking, period. My brother Barry, at 57, still regularly has that dream where he can’t find his class, shows up late, finds out it’s the wrong class but that he has a final he didn’t study for. I have that dream too. I believe it’s the classic dream of an overachiever. Either that, or an obsessive-compulsive neurotic, I’m not sure which one.    

My children appear to be OK, though my husband and I did a little checking and discovered that
ours was not the only incoming freshman who forgot her name when going to pick up books. I would have made fun of her, but Rick reminds me he had to accompany me to Northwestern that same day last week to help me park. Really, that’s not true. I could have parked alone. But it was scary finding the right building where I had to bring forms for a class I’m taking.

I find I am almost paralyzed these days by simple tasks, which explains the weeklong dearth of blogs (my apologies and thanks if this caused great concern or threw anyone off their normal routines). For a while there, I thought I was done, had nothing significant left to say anymore. Then, thank goodness, I realized that having nothing significant to say had never stopped me before and in fact, goes right to the heart of what my blogs are all about.
Furthermore, I think I need these blogs more than ever as my anchor and a sort of repository of insignificance as life becomes that much more complicated.

I am quite sure, in the coming weeks, that this faculty class I am taking will cause me great angst. I should mention the entire class only lasts 10 days, but they’re accelerated days and since I did not understand the course outline, I am a bit concerned.
Also, in case either child decides for the first time to ask me, and not their father, for any guidance on homework, this could cause some anxious times as well. The books look very scary this year.

Then there are the Bears, which have always made me a little nauseous. And this continued quest toward re-invention, which people now want me to actually speak about as if it is
something I have figured out.

This is what I wanted, I keep telling myself. Back when the Tribune told me that in a cost-cutting move, they didn’t want me anymore but then started hiring people and finding other ways to spend the money they had saved, and all I could see was a big void in my future, I wanted to be busy. And honestly, there wasn’t a single day, including the day I left, that I haven’t been busy.

I am, in fact, much busier than I have ever been. And happier, I should add.
This much I have figured out.
The fall? Not yet.