My young human is getting old. Yesterday he turned 16. He would have gotten his driver’s license yesterday on his actual birthday, but the day before, Mom discovered a snafu with the driver’s ed class that he took in the summer last year. When that discrepancy is fixed, he’ll be able to get his license. Jamie was disappointed and frustrated, but he acted like an adult about it and said he understood that these things happen. Personally, I think he took this disappointment much better than most adults I know! Woof! He should be able to get his license in about two weeks.
Sunday, we had a birthday party for Jamie and his friends. Lots of nice young humans came over, and we spent most of the time outside. They swam, played bean bags, badminton, volleyball, and pickle ball. Naturally, I got in the games where I could. I also tried to sneak some birthday cake. I was so tired out by the time the last one left that I fell asleep on the couch. Mom practically dragged me upstairs.
Exhausted!
Yesterday was, besides Jamie’s birthday proper, the first day of school. He had to wear his shirt and tie, because they were taking ID/yearbook pictures as well.
Here is my young human, all ready for the first day of school as a Junior.
The cool thing about it is, today he did NOT have to go to school, because it is the day the Freshmen have the school to themselves to figure out where they are going for classes. The schools did not do that when Mom was in high school back in the stone age. Way back then, they just threw everybody into the school and let them sink or swim. I think it is nice that the new kids have a day to get grounded in their new surroundings before the pressure of crowded hallways and trying to get to class on time. It’s much better on the nerves, I think.
Tomorrow is going to start early; that is, getting up at 6 a.m. for the first full day of school. Mom says that for her, “summer is over” because school has started and the daily grind of Fall is here already. She says she’s going to keep the pool open for as long as possible, though, and try to hang on to Summer for a little bit longer.
Best of luck to everyone starting school or a new venture! Woof!
Love, Maggie
maggiesblog0019 
It is a full-time job watching him, isn’t it?
Wow! School starts really early there. I remember (back in the same Dark Ages when you were young, only maybe another generation before that….) school started the week before Labor day, only for the last three days, which were mostly passing out books and reading assignments and orientation days.
When I got my first driver’s license (again, back before cars came with wheels, which hadn’t been invented yet….) the examiner took me out to the car after I passed the written test. He instructed me to take a drive around the courthouse block, using hand signals.
He was an elderly guy – probably 50! – and when he started driving (in his Fred Flinstonemobile) “hand signals” had a specific meaning: you stuck your hand out the window and made frantic gestures with your arm and hand that other people driving Fred Flintstonemobiles understood to mean: stopping to let dinosaur cross dirt path; turning to the right to pick up a brontosaur spare rib at the brontosaur spare rib joint; or slow down you fool on the other side of the dirt path because I’m turning left in front of you!!!!
Though wheels hadn’t been invented yet when I turned 16, that stick on the steering column that you used to signal the direction you were turning had been. When the examiner told me to use hand signals, I thought he meant that, so I carefully stopped at stop signs (without using my feet dragging on the ground – my car had a brake pedal!) and was behind the line, signaled my right turns by pushing my “hand signal” down to activate the pterodactyl that extended its right wing to let people around me know my intentions, and successfully rounded the block only to learn I failed!
“I told you to use hand signals,” this fossil of an examiner said. “Happy Birthday,” I thought. It was my birthday and the day of my first great disappointment in life! I had to wait a week to get another chance to take my test again.
In a similar vein, my mother, after driving sixty years or so, failed the written test because one of the questions had as an answer that you signaled a stop by opening your door. Apparently in the days before cars had wheels, pterodactyls to indicate one’s intentions, radios, or engines, that was how people indicated a stop! (I always thought up till then that it was the cloud of dust one’s dragging feet raised when one brought the Fred Flintstonemobile to a stop that did it, but my mother indicated not.) She never did this, never would do it, but you know how some people are when they take tests!
Another time, when I took my test to renew my license, there were two new examiners (the fossil retired or was run over by an angry test taker). After I did the test and one of the examiners graded it, he called me over. He showed me a picture of a railroad crossing signal. “What’s that?” I correctly called it what it was. “I didn’t think you didn’t know what it was,” he said with a smile, then he showed me what I’d answered. My answer was so incredibly wrong, only a total idiot would have answered that way! He passed me.
I was so impressed with the difference in how the new examiners handled the public than the fossil that I wrote a glowing letter about my experience with them to their boss at the state capitol. The next time I had to renew my license (two year later), they remembered me because their boss had put a commendation in their files based on my letter! Yes, they were pleased to see me!
Jamie will do fine next time!
I used to dread the end of summer when the children were young!
Happy birthday (yesterday) to your young human!
🙂
Thanks!
A birthday and the (sort of) first day of school – what a day!
right? right? lol where is the justice!!! Woof!
Happy birthday to your young human Maggie.
Luv ya’
Dezi and Raena
thank you kitties! woof!