I’m revamping the “About” section of the blog day, so check it out and pretend it’s another post if you’d like.  It will be a couple of hours between this moment and the moment when anything is changed there, however.  Patience, grasshopper.

And now for the promised You’ve Got Mail moment.  That’s one of my all-time favorite chick flicks.  If you missed Meg Ryan mania in the 90’s, the movie is about a cute-if-slightly-bookish New Yorker who often feels insignificant and wonders what she’s doing with her life.  She runs a bookstore that her mother ran before her, and her life is turned upside down (just like the Fresh Prince) when a Barnes & Noble-ish store opens down the street from her.

Before all of the existential questioning and falling in love happens, she and an email pen pal share their feelings about fall.  Here goes:

Joe Fox: Don’t you love New York in the fall?  It makes me wanna buy school supplies.  I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

After which my inner dork sighs.

I was one of those kids who couldn’t wait to start school every year.  Whether I was homeschooled or went to “real” school, I couldn’t contain the joy of having a fresh, blank notebook and a few new pens.  I organized my supplies just so in my bag or on my desk, and I waited anxiously for that first day.  Books and friends and more books were waiting for me just around the corner.  There were tests to conquer, hours and hours of solid procrastination to cram in, and all sorts of other unexpected happiness to come.

A friend did send me a bunch of new pencils when I started grad school, and it was one of the best care packages I’ve ever received (Yours are great, too, Mom!).  There’s something about fresh school supplies that will always take me back to those moments when I couldn’t wait to go back to school.  School wasn’t about pressure or success then.  It was about a new year, doing the best you could, and reading a trillion books.  It was good.

[Picture by Merelymel13.]