Peter Costa: First day of school

The first day of school for me was always exciting. There were new teachers, new kids and new fears. I discovered, however, that once I located the pencil sharpener, I would be OK. I had the bad habit of bearing down too hard on my No.2 pencils and I broke the pencil point continually. I also wrote in a large hand and used more graphite than a mob-connected accountant

Selecting a seat was my next priority. I didn’t want to sit next to my summer friend Billy because he didn’t pay attention in class and was always getting reprimanded for talking, passing notes, leaving his seat and throwing paper airplanes.

I also tried to avoid John’s area entirely. John was huge for his age and scary. He was very quiet. He was rather like a bear or a moose or some large animal that could suddenly rumble out of the woods and ruin your whole day. During recess, only the toughest kids stood around John on the playground. The rest of us geeks hid in a different hemisphere.

Usually, I sat next to the smartest kid in class. It was easier for me that way. The teacher usually smiled at the smartest kid just before and after asking a question, and I preferred to bathe in the reflected glow of that smile rather than experience the cold penumbra cast by the teacher’s scowl at the trouble-making kids.

Also, sitting next to the smartest kid meant fewer questions would come our way. The teacher always felt the need to spread questions out and not always seek the smartest kid’s response. And, by the way, until about high school, the kid who was the overall smartest was almost always a girl. Yes, there might be boy who loved numbers and was, preternaturally, an arithmetic prodigy but he was the same boy who turned off his mind when any discussion of history, English or social studies arose. Usually, in the 1950s era when I grew up, girls liked school and applied themselves better than boys.

I’m sure having more teachers who were female in the primary and middle school years also added to girls adapting and performing better in school than in high school when there were more male teachers, who, I suspect, favored boys in the classroom.

The first day of school was also the time when one wore a new shirt, pants and shoes. Almost every kid sported new clothes. Some of the boys wore trousers that still had a store tag stapled to the back waistband. We all had fun pointing those out to the unsuspecting wearers.

Getting our new textbooks and supplies the first day was fun too. Sometimes the teacher would ask us to paste on a new label on the inside cover of the book and to sign our names on the labels. It was cool to know that the book was officially declared my book.

I carefully placed each book in the desk. Arithmetic and English books were near the front of the desk drawer because I referred to them the most. History and social studies textbooks drifted to the back of the drawer like forlorn manatees.

The first day of school usually flew by as we watched “filmstrips” in history, went to the blackboards and worked on percentage problems or learned what a preposition was supposed to do in a sentence. The next day and the next would come and go and our shoes would become scuffed and our books made more flexible by repeated use. Soon there wouldn’t be a new clothes tag in sight.

Peter Costa is a senior editor with GateHouse Media New England and is the author of two books of humor. His latest, “Outrageous CostaLiving: Still Laughing Through Life,” is available at amazon.com.