Wednesday, September 5, 2018

The First Day of School: I Still Have That Pit in My Stomach

Today, Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018, is the first day of school for the almost one million children in the New York City public school system. My normally quiet block is crowded with cars jostling for parking spaces as parents unload their kids with their blue school uniforms and cute backpacks.

I live half a block from an elementary school, PS 114Q. I hear the sound of hundreds of nervous kids in the school yard waiting to meet their teachers. Memories are triggered. That first day of school pit-in-the-belly never quite goes away when school begins - actually that feeling came back in milder form every Sunday.

My first experience with back to school nausea began in September, 1950 as a five year old when my mother walked me a block to PS 190 in East New York for my first first day of school.

I threw up in the school yard.

Today, 68 years later, that same feeling was triggered by the kids and parents heading to school.

This time it was my cat that threw up. And she's not going to school until next year.

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