Today was Jacob’s first day of grade one. Pretty exciting stuff. Grade one is real school. Everyone knows that once you go both morning and afternoon you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re full grown and ready to rule the world.

Jacob has been ready to rule the world since birth. Grade one makes it official.

My least favorite thing about taking my kids to school is the social aspect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those shy grown ups who doesn’t know how to carry herself when around other people of my age and station in life. I can do me some Hi How are you and other civilities. It’s the other people who give me reason to shudder. It’s the freaks and losers out there.

Jacob first went to school at the age of three. A small Montessori school lead by a woman who must have been raised by Nazis and who ran the joint like a military school for troubled teens. And if she weren’t bad enough the parents had not a social skill between them.

We would line up each day to drop our kids at the door and while you might think that ten grown people standing about for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes might forge drop off friendships and be given to idle chatter, such was nowhere near the case. We stood there as though each of us spoke a different language from the other and feared that so much as a smile would cause undoable damage to the universe.

Second year of preschool was at a different and far nicer Montessori. The teachers were lovely and the parents had all the appearance of fine social breeding. I say appearance because although everyone smiled and spoke, not a bit of it came off as genuine. Plus, sometimes I’d be in the middle of a fake conversation with one parent and another would walk up, step between us and stand with their back to me as though I were in fact not human but perhaps a cardboard cutout or a wall and so this maneuver was not to be interpreted as obnoxious since I wasn’t even really there. Good times.

By the end of last year (Jake’s Kindergarten and Madison’s first year of preschool) I’d given up trying to be normal in the face of all these socially inept people. I made no effort at the usual niceties. I no longer felt compelled to say so much as a hello to people I knew. It felt absurd to me to behave this way but at the same time it was a lot less ridiculous than what I’d been attempting until this time.

Today I took Jake to school renewed from summer and aparantly forgetting what it’s all about. I expected, oh fool that I am, for people to do what people do when they haven’t seen one another for two months. Oh, hi! How was your summer! Rather, it was more like, I can’t see you, I can’t see you and lots of nervous eye darting.

It’s okay, I wanted to shout, You don’t have to say hello to me. I don’t even like you. I was just being civil.

The funniest part is that all of a sudden each and every one of these people will decide at some point that we’re best friends. They will arrive some random day and start speaking to me as though we’ve been mates since int inception of time. We will laugh and share stories. We will commiserate on shared heartaches and woes. We will do this for one, maybe two days before poof! back to normal. Maybe they like my clothes that day. Or I’ve done my hair in a way that is pleasing. I cannot say for sure. It is unpredictable.

This morning was awful. I understand that the children will behave differently than they did last time they saw one another. Kids who used to run around the schoolyard together are shy and nervous to say hello. They will take a few minutes to warm up to one another again. By recess everything will be kosher pickle once more.

But grown ups? Seriously? I haven’t seen you for eight weeks so when I say hello I want you to look away nervously because you’re not sure I meant you but then you think maybe I did mean you so you look back and whisper hello so inaudibly that it’s more like you mouth it and tried to make it look like you said mellow, like the word mellow was a part of another conversation you were having and no one would think you actually said hello to this woman who you can’t believe is even talking to you! You don’t even know me! I haven’t seen you in TWO MONTHS!

Maturity is not something gathered with age. It is, in fact, a myth. And if you run into me at the grocery store please don’t say hello. I will be acting like an eight year old with low self esteem. I will run the other way.

Later when I pick him up I’m going to walk up to one these people and go BOO! I think it’s time to have some fun.