This week’s Twofer taps perfectly into this week, and asks me all about a feeling that’s been nagging me for the last little while.

What is your best back-to-school memory?

All of my back-to-school memories are exactly the same, even if I’m not sure they’re actually valid or not. They all involve me preparing with painful detail the night before — in the fifth grade, by carefully filling binders with paper and opening up packages of pens; in the tenth grade, by reading my schedule six times and then making sure the pens from last year were still in my backpack — and waking up insanely early the next day.

And rain. For some reason, it always rained. If it didn’t rain the first day, it was raining within two days, and I was smelling wet pavement as I walked to school. My jeans and my running shoes would be damp until almost lunchtime, thanks to the fact that schools don’t think “circulating air” is conducive to learning, and I would meet my teachers for the first time in an atmosphere heavy with the odor of wet pants.

The best thing about the first day was that it was short — whether it was grade school, high school or University, classes were only about 10% of what they would become only a few weeks later. The teacher would introduce him or herself to the students, stumble through the names in the class for the very first time, and try to figure out how to fill the ensuing thirty-five minutes.

I always felt a surge of sympathy for the teachers who still cared enough to rehearse the names on their class lists in advance, but ended up getting them totally wrong anyway. You could spot them easily, because they were the ones who were both surprised and just a little embarrassed when the students corrected them, immediately crossing out whatever phonetic guide they’d made up for the tough names and replacing it with another.

I never minded the first day of school. It was the other ten months’ worth that I hated.

What is your worst back-to-school memory?

Just about the entire ninth grade. I don’t think I did any of it right. To this day, I don’t think I did any of it right.

My grades were fine, of course, but I really didn’t make any new friends. All of the kids that I knew from grade school were going to other high schools — the prissy girls to the Drama Programme on the other side of town; the bullies and the speds going to the Technical Institute way the hell out and gone, where all the local townships liked to dump their bullies and speds — and so I was left with the jocks and leftover girls, who mostly knew me for the shy victim that I was.

I did what I could to avoid them.

That left me with the option of making new friends, a task at which I am no better now than I was then. Through the miracle of Group Work, it was discovered that I was useful to have around, since I was basically quick enough to do the work for everyone else, and occasionally smart-mouthed enough to shame even the accomplished class clowns. But none of it really stuck together, and I was too shy to even consider doing things differently.

To illustrate: I would sit outside of classes and try to sleep, rather than make small talk. Unconsciousness just seemed more comfortable than the ninth grade.