What was your favourite part about returning to school?

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What was your favourite part about return­ing to school?

That’s not an easy ques­tion. It was­n’t cool to acknowl­edge being hap­py to return to school each year, of course, so while I was glad, I did­n’t real­ly acknowl­edge it to myself. As a result, it is more dif­fi­cult to access those memories.

Even though I knew there would be end­less amounts of review each year, I was always excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of learn­ing some­thing new. After we left Gads­den, I was able to look for­ward to school library access, too. (The ele­men­tary school I attend­ed in Alaba­ma did­n’t even have a library, and back then, the Gwin­nett Coun­ty Pub­lic Library was­n’t the award-win­ning facil­i­ty that it is now.)

I also had a secret hope that maybe this would be the year when I would meet some­one like me. Some­one else who did­n’t fit in. Some­one who pre­ferred books to most peo­ple, who either did­n’t go to church or was only there because his or her par­ents forced the issue, who would be will­ing to dis­cuss the ques­tions brought up by all the con­tra­dic­tions in the Bible and var­i­ous church’s teach­ings (and how preach­ers and oth­er church lead­ers actu­al­ly lived). Some­one who did­n’t think it was bad to be intel­li­gent, maybe even some­one who would admit to day­dream­ing and mak­ing up new sto­ries about peo­ple they’d read about, or com­plete­ly new sto­ries of their own. The kind of peo­ple you did­n’t run into just because your par­ents bought hous­es in the same neigh­bor­hood, went to the same church or worked for the same company.

I did meet some­one who became a dear friend in the first week of my Junior year, on the bus, in fact. She even lived in my neigh­bor­hood! I con­tin­ue to be amazed by the fact that I said some­thing to her first, as she’s far more extro­vert­ed than I have ever been. Dorothea is a trea­sure, and I will always be thank­ful for meet­ing her.