CSotD: School bells ring and children sing
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The comics pages are currently full of back-to-school gags, but Jeff Corriveau goes well past the obvious in today's Deflocked. Comic strips have only a few seconds to capture the mind, but the more I look at this, panel-by-panel, the more I find to admire in it.
"Back to School" is an almost mandatory annual topic for comics, which I would divide into two categories: The End of Summer Vacation and The First Day of School.
The latter can be more inventive, I think. As noted earlier, Edge City has a good story arc currently about a new teacher, which is getting a little darker every day. And I suspect that Jef Mallett welcomes the start of school, since Frazz is based there and a lot of threads pick back up once the kids and faculty are back in the building.
(And, for the "how do they keep the candles lit under water" crowd: There is a system in elementary education called "looping" in which a teacher has the same class for several consecutive years while the curriculum she uses changes from one grade level to the next. Also, it's a freaking comic. You should really just relax.)
Cartoons about the end of summer are, I think, more predictable and thus generally less successful, which is what makes this inventive example stand out so much.
It's not an approach with a lot of substance to begin with. I mean, let's face it: Summer ends, whether school starts again or not.
We were throwing things in the river for our dogs to jump in after yesterday, and someone mentioned that, at some point, that activity would have to shut down for the winter. It occurred to me that, growing up, there was a common rule that we weren't allowed in the lake until June 1, but that I didn't remember any rule about the latest we were allowed to swim.
The first theory someone offered was that there is so much going on in the "Back to School" period that jumping in the lake becomes less of an attraction. There was also the theory that, once the ice was out in the spring, we were all waiting to be able to swim again, so we had to be restrained, but that, by summer's end, it wasn't a big enough deal to require a rule.
Later, the obvious smote me in the face: Air changes temperature sooner than water.
So, in the spring, it's warm enough on shore to make a swim sound good, but the water may still be cold enough to send you into shock, and thus a rule is required. But in mid-October, while lake temperatures remain such that you could probably have a nice swim, the air is cold enough that nobody wants to strip down on the shore, much less get out of the water and stand there wet.
I don't expect this reasoning to have an impact on the dogs, mind you, but it does mean that "I wish summer could last forever" is a pretty wistful thought and one that really isn't all that closely related to the start of school.
And anyway, to be honest, by the end of vacation, I looked forward to seeing my friends again, and, while I wasn't a huge fan of school itself, I was always curious about what was going to happen next. Third grade was a bit of a minefield in our school — there were two mean teachers and one nice teacher, and we knew when we left in June who we had the next fall, so two-thirds of kids would be dreading the start of that year. Beyond that particular year, however, I think most of us were ready for the next adventure.
What I dread this time of year is the Staples "Most Wonderful Time of the Year" commercials (which I have to admit I didn't see this time around). When I was home with the kids, I enjoyed the extra time I had with them over summer, and, while I didn't dread the start of the school year, I didn't see it as a cause for celebration, either.
Hating your own children wasn't much in fashion when I was a kid, which is kind of funny, considering that my age cohort was born in a time when the options of having us or not were pretty limited. Seems strange that, in a time when getting pregnant and giving birth are pretty deliberate actions, people have children and then get pleasure out of bad-mouthing them.
But, then, getting married has always been more or less optional, and there is a certain type of person who enjoys loudly and publicly bemoaning the choice made. I suppose letting loose some of that misdirected hostility on your children, too, is only fair.
Meanwhile, here's the Back-to-School jingle I remember best, coming at about the 40-second point. And, no, youngsters, the video doesn't match the radio soundtrack and kids didn't dress like Tony Franciosa, even in those more formal times:
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