I don't believe it.
The picture shows the thermometer reading in my car on Saturday evening. Granted, my car was parked in the sun at the time. Once I hit the road it cooled down to a mere 101F.
Even though it is still summer on the calender, and we are in the dog days of August having the second heat wave in as many weeks, for most of the kids around here summer is over. They went back to school this week. It happens absurdly early these days. It wasn't like this when I was a kid, which doesn't seem like so long ago - at least not to me. I feel a little sorry for today's kids. School doesn't end until near the end of June and then they get hauled back in right smack in the middle of August. Do they care? Do they know what they're missing? Or is summer break just one long spell of playing video games broken up by occasional trips to soccer camp or whatnot?
7 comments:
I still miss my summer vacation... *sigh*
Yeah. Kids have it made.
There was a story today on NPR News about why school starts back so damn early. I'm still not sure I buy into all the reasons. But what do I know? I don't have any kids and am out of the loop on kid stuff.
I have friends who live in Australia, and they have a somewhat similar calendar. They have a week off every 6 or 8 weeks (I forget) and then they have 6 weeks off in the summer, starting at Christmas. (Sounds weird, right?)
My nephew has that kind of calendar also. But I don't see the local kids getting all that much time off during the year. Oh well. The school year makes my commute suck unless I leave my house before early, so I have been biting the bullet and dragging ass out of bed much earlier than I would like. I pass by three schools on the way in. Once the school buses and parent dropoffs get going, it is all over.
Around here they cancel school the moment the first snowflake hits the ground, so they begin early in order to compensate for that.
One of the local school districts has what they call a "year-round" schedule: nine weeks of class followed by four weeks off. It seems popular in that district with parents, kids, and teachers alike.
I agree with you. And in fact, here in Michigan they changed the law so that kids can't go back to school before Labor Day. Parents complained that they couldn't go on vacation over Labor Day weekend and this affected tourism dollars. I think it's a good thing.
That really screws the pooch for all the "back to school" ads, doesn't it? We still have a traditional school year calendar in New York, so things haven't changed that much. But fermicat, I know what you mean about dropoffs jamming up the streets. I used to live across the street from a school and sometimes I couldn't get out of my driveway! More than once I left nasty notes on cars parked illegally in front of my house, not to mention yelling at stupid people stopped in the middle of the street.
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