Back to Reality Sale!

Uh-oh.

Remember September? As seen from June? A distant land where all promises will be fulfilled, by dint of new resolve and a reservoir of resources: blank notebooks, gel pens, new shoes, number 2 pencils, and cool weather.

It's here. And I'm not ready, and it's still hot and sluggish and summery, like yesterday, like August. The leaves are firmly attached to the trees.

Doesn't matter. It's September. Yellow as a yellowjacket, a school bus, a Fort Ticonderoga pencil, a sunflower, a xanthophyllic maple leaf .

We pin our hopes on September. It's a corkboard of goals and promises affixed with pushpins and brass tacks, the ones you get down to, finally, at long last, let's do this thing.

Maybe. May bee. Bumble bee, busy as a: See Busy as a bee. See cartoon of bee flying around with backpack full of books, drawn on sheet of three-hole filler paper as teacher calls your name for the second time. See time drawn and quartered, hear echoing slam of locker followed by faint zip of combination lock followed by serious hall bell telling you to get to your next class. Which you do, but the students in their desks are all flying out the open window, one by one, like paratroopers, including you, into the summer day outside, because September is a summer month, a harvest month, the last refuge of baseball, and below you lie the yellow fields with the threshers moving, a Van Gogh painting. He's up ahead in the lead desk with an easel. You're too shy to ask him what he thinks of your bee cartoon. Besides, he only speaks Dutch. What is September in Dutch?

It's September.