I'm just not ready to fall back into Real Life
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, September 1, 2005

I still can hear my third-grade teacher's end-of-school-year warning: ``People,'' she said, in that tone particular to veteran educators who've grown weary of life in the trenches, ``you better get ready. Next year you're going to be in the real world.''

I think I'm safe in assuming that it was the first time most of us kids had heard of this ``real world,'' but we knew instinctively that it was not a good place. Even if in this particular case all it meant was that instead of staying in the same classroom for the entire day and having teachers come to us, we, the students, would circulate to different rooms.

If only.

It would be a few years until the ``real world'' threat was issued again - and again and again. Before junior high, and then high school and then college, and, of course, at college graduation, where the dreaded words barely had to be invoked, so close were we to the actual real world.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started all those years ago, all talk of the real world stopped. I was in it, and that was that. In fact, I hadn't even thought much about the real world (other than the TV show) in years, until this morning, when I overheard a woman complaining that she wasn't ready for summer's end and the inevitable return to ``real life'' - the grownup-with-a-job version of the real world.

``We've only got a few days left,'' she said, sounding like a convicted felon savoring the last moments on the Outside before her sentence starts. A few days left, that is, before we have to go back to a world where you can't wear shorts to work or rationalize a day of hooky or eat ice cream for dinner.

Summer is recess for adults, but come Monday night, the whistle will blow and it will all be over. But why? We've extended daylight-saving time, why not summer?

Assuming everyone feels how I do (always a big mistake), I mentioned my dream to a friend and she went off on summer, big time. ``I can't wait for it to end,'' she began, ticking off summer's unpleasant side effects: the pressure to get time off from work to enjoy all the fun, the pedicure and self-tanner expenses, the annoying hum of air conditioners.

``In the fall you can relax,'' she said. ``You don't have to lose weight to fit into your fall wardrobe or get to the beach early enough to get a parking spot. Fall suits Bostonians in a way summer doesn't. We're moving forward, walking faster.'' She took a breath in preparation for her final point. ``Capris will finally go away.''

Yeah, but after a Boston winter of hibernating with packs of Ho-Hos, it'll be time to tackle our collective winter weight. And then it's back to the real world, people.