Ah, Labor Day. Traditional end of summer. And if you’re a kid you know what it also means… back to school. In New York we always gave ourselves an extra day and started Wednesday, but around these parts it’s on tomorrow. Yikes.
One wonders, though, how much of a shift, really, we see today from summer vacation to the start of school in the lives of America’s youth. What with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, ubiquitous sports and science camps, and non-stop parental event planning, do we really see much of a difference between the two? When I was a kid most of my classmates disappeared for a few months every summer. Now the biggest change kids probably see is a shift from the mere avatars of summer back to the real-life people of school. Who turn quickly back into avatars when back home at their computers.
Without rendering a judgment as to which approach is better I will certainly say times have changed since people were people and twitter was something done by summertime birds. And when did I get so old?