6/12/2012 The Last First Day of School Picture

I checked my camera to make sure the batteries were good and the new chip was installed. I took out Troy's little School Days Book I had bought when he started kindergarten. It now bulges with thirteen years of report cards tucked neatly into the pouches along with class pictures, scout certificates, sport pictures, choir programs and other miscellaneous stuff I tucked in. Movie ticket stubs when I remembered to save them including from the time I took his seventh grade scout patrol to see Will Smith in that scary movie, I Am Legend, where people turned into bat-like creatures. I screamed like crazy and he never went to a movie with me again after that. As I leafed through the pages, I paused at his first grade picture. He is wearing a tiny sport coat and tie and his eyes are in a huge bug-eye position. I remember when he came home with his first grade picture. His eyes were closed. Two weeks later we got a picture retake notice and went into the bathroom so he could look in the full length mirror and practice keeping his eyes open. He opened them so wide that he looked like he'd seen a ghost. We laughed and laughed and laughed. As he went out the door to the school bus with his dad, I called out to him, "Don't forget to keep your eyes open!" He turned and opened his eyes as wide as they could go and yelled back, "Like this mommy?!" He knew I would laugh and was rewarded appropriately. As I look at his little School Days Book, I always turn to that page. His first grade picture with that frozen startled expression. I can still hear his voice. "Like this mommy?!"

The Day the Comb Binder Gods Smiled

I froze like a deer in the headlights. I had offered to help the student teacher with anything she might need done and of course it had to be the one thing I hadn't done for five years. Every school has one. The dreaded comb binder machine. Any PTA volunteer will tell you a good story of their first time around with a comb binder machine. It all starts innocently enough with young children making some super-cute artwork. Then, a teacher or parent decides that all the cute artwork needs to be saved for posterity in the form of a book. My first time binding was as a room mother in Nancy Bacon's kindergarten class. She wanted the best classwork and art work for each child for the entire year compiled into an over-sized comb bound book. Unfortunately for me, little kids are oftentimes overgenerous with their finger-paint, which makes the paper bubble and warp as it dries. So, I punched all the tiny rectangular holes into the crazily wavy thick papers with the comb binder and nervously started the covers. Then, the fateful moment came. Would the covers fit over the warped pages? Would the binding machine work? Beads of sweat popped out on my brow as I fitted all the papers onto the tiny metal teeth. I finished the first book. It was fine. No masterpiece of binding, but not terrible either. I released my breath and finished the books. After the first book, I was a comb binding machine and really got in a groove and enjoyed it. Somewhere in my attic, inside a plastic box with a tight-fitting lid, is that book of Troy's from 2000, nestled under years of subsequent work. He graduates from high school this year and his box will be waiting for him to buy a home and then it will finally be moved and looked at for the first time since that fateful day when the Comb Binder Gods Smiled.