FIVE-SUBJECT NOTEBOOK WORKS TO SPUR EDUCATION

The hot humid days just followed one after the other. I began to think I was trapped in some Sargasso Sea. Then, as it does every year at a distinct moment in time, something happens and I know that my boat has made some infinitesimal change in position, or the slightest of breezes have blown against the sails.

Each season, that moment in time is different. Perhaps it is when I first notice a rusty red color on the dogwood trees, a molted bird's feather lying in my path, a bit of thistle floss catching in my hair.

This year I was riding along Perryville Road, admiring the petunias around the old~, red brick Meyer home and looked out to where the pleasant meadow lay up warmly to a wooded ridge and there, like an old friend I hadn't seen for a year, was that blue haze. I don't know what combination of atmospheric conditions causes it, but it is always a harbinger that another season is in the wings, waiting to come on.

I straightened my shoulders, took a deep breath and let a satisfied feeling just flow over me unchecked as one does when he senses a new beginning.

A few days later I was at a discount store, rolling my cart along behind a mother and two small boys making purchases for the beginning of another school year. The mother was checking a list. "Glue," she said. "You'll need glue." "Elmer's," one of the boys qualified. "Ruler?" continued the mother. "Do we have a ruler?" The smaller boy assured them they had a ruler but who knew where it was? "I had it measuring that dead snake this summer. Remember?"

Notebooks, pencils, crayons followed. Same old things, I thought, not without some degree of comfort. At least they still start out with the same elementary things. But I suppose they will quickly get into calculators and computers.

I looked around for my annual red-backed Indian Chief tablet but didn't see any. Even these discount stores are getting uppity about rough tablet paper decorated with a native American.

Since the aisle was narrow, and the little family was in no hurry and I wasn't either, I continued to follow and look around for supplies I might need. Pencils? No. Pens? No. Elmer's glue? No. Ruler? Yes. I have three yardsticks, but no ruler. For what I'll need one, I don't know. Maybe I'll catch old Stripe next year and will want to measure him, foot by foot.

There was a stack of five-subject notebooks. They have some kind of indescribable attraction for me. Just think of the words such a notebook could hold words carefully chosen and put together in some new way. I picked up one to examine the lines. I like the narrow ruled kind. The five sections were partitioned with colorful stiff cardboards. Now, what five subjects could I study this winter? Always, my first answer is, "Shakespeare."

I went happily through college with only a nodding acquaintance with old Bill. Oh, I know "Out, out dammed spot," "Beware of the Ides of March" and "Where the bee sucks, there suck I. In a cowslip's bell I lie," but t~hat's about it.

Surely I ought to know more about Shakespeare. Should I enroll and monitor a class? Naw! I'd have to fix my hair every day and get more s~uitable clothes and huff and puff up the college hill. I'll just get Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare" and take a short-hand, understandable course. "And miss the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote? Tolerate language being transplanted from its own natural soil and wild poetic garden?" I can hear Shakespeare fans scream.

Alas, yes, I'll miss all that which would send me to countless amplified books of explanations and leave little time for my four other subjects. It's the price I'll have to pay for not taking Martha Shea's classes in Shakespeare instead of the Romantic Period in English Literature under Riggs. I do not feel cheated.

Now, what else? Einstein's theory? Kant's ramblings? How the super collider works? I think not. There are 246 wrinkles in my brow already. Why increase them? I may want to enter a Mrs. American Grandmother pageant some day and the judges would surely be equipped with some strong, long-range microscopes!

I think my second division will be about tar babies, as in Uncle Remus and how such sticky, no-let-loose things affect American society today tax tar babies, health care tar babies, unbalanced budgets tar babies, cleaning-the kitchen cabinets~~~~~ tar babies, ad infinitum.

Then there are Habakkuk and Haggai. I don't know much about them. Perhaps they can be condensed into one section.

That leaves two sections to go. Maybe, since I've been into pumpkins this year, from seed to finished product (such finished product yet to come), the fourth section will be, "All you ever wanted to know about pumpkins that you didn't learn in Kindergarten."

Number five? How, if left-handed, to cut fingernails on the right hand with scissors? How to pass up five-subject notebooks on the store shelf in favor of a candy bar? What atmospheric conditions produce the gossamer blue haze that hangs over the countryside when late summer approaches? How to measure a live garden snake with a ruler. I don't want to kill Old~ Stripe, just hassle him.

REJOICE!