Thoughts, joys, fears and dreams on the first day of school
Will they feel normal not to touch each other? Not to hug? Not to kiss? But no, you quickly get used to the constraint and immediately get used to freedom again. Diana Zuncheddu's post
School has begun for many, but not yet for everyone.
The thing that a mother missed the most is the perfume inside the backpack of the new: sheets, folders, compasses and protractors, colored pencils, red and blue covers, diaries.
The gum that everyone always loses and the glue stick. Round, big, and red, with the name written on the label and protected with the transparent tape so it doesn't come off anymore, because they are all the same, just swap them. The new material is not brought to school for now, it is not yet known if it can be left there, so for now with a case and a few sheets it is possible to combine something.
The thing that the children missed the most is, I think, the habit of entering through the same door and the same hall, of finding the same classroom after the summer, with the three windows at the top and the drawings of the previous year.
Some large or too numerous classes to fit in small classrooms have been split into two, the reds and the blues. Someone has suffered because the friend was there and the friend because she is no longer with me, but let's see, maybe in December it will all be over and you will be friends again as before.
At the counter the mask can be removed anyway, if you stay there and respect the distance with the others.
The middle school kids seem to have lacked the freedom to get up, to move, to touch each other. The rules must be respected "otherwise they suspend us". On the other hand, at that age or you threaten heavy or who listens to you.
Some high schools have instead divided the days, some days in attendance, others not.
All in all it comes in handy from time to time not to take the tram to follow the lesson, but the eyes, above the mask, are more interesting this way, than when you see them drowned all over the face.
Whatever happens, it is a success to be left again, even if "like this", with parents worried that they did not understand the house number of the new entrance, those who desperate because they did not know what they should put in their backpack, those who oh my what a trauma!
Will these 2020 pupils remember a year like this? Very likely. And next year they will be three times happier than a normal school start.
As much as I try to think that a little obsession with washed hands doesn't hurt, the lack of freedom, that of pushing yourself and dropping someone, that of resting your arm on the neighbor's shoulder telling him the secrets, on the grave of the Napoleon's dog in the park, or on the acorns hidden in the wooden house, pretending to be little men, that will be missing.
Will these 7, 8, 9-year-olds look at each other forever with suspicion? Twelve-year-olds? Sixteen? Will they feel normal not to touch each other? Not to hug? Not to kiss?
But no, you quickly get used to the constraint and immediately get used to freedom again.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pensieri-gioie-timori-e-sogni-nel-primo-giorno-di-scuola/ on Tue, 15 Sep 2020 05:20:11 +0000.