Dear Boundless Families:
On day three of this year’s boarding school, the mosquitoes are still buzzing. They are thriving in this bizarre September heat, forcing us to shove aside land based activities in favour of the river. Your kids are the beneficiaries of this odd yet delightful consequence of climate change, running around as they are on the fields and pickle-ball courts, pretending it’s July. Hopping into rapids. Then running around in the heat. Rinse. Repeat.
Just check out the photo of this morning’s wake up-call. The whole world is a mysterious mist that has engulfed your kids into a loving community. This is the real good news. The new kids have taken quickly to this place. They are already teasing me, those buggers (your kids, not the mosquitoes). This suggests a precocious comfort level. Usually it takes a month before the new crew gets a license to harass me .
The group is so busy that they haven’t yet had time to visit my very own chocolate dispensary. I cleared the shelves of Bulk Barn, hoping to bribe your kids for an occasional visit to the old folks home (my office). I am still twiddling my thumbs waiting on them.
Yesterday I hung out with A. on the porch. He had a book in hand. Something about the history of scents. We were watching the other kids frolic like two old grandpas. I tell him he is an old soul.
“What do you mean by that?” I could see his neurons trying to process a phrase he has never heard before.
“You are so chilled”, I say. I then tell him my theory of inversion. That, as a young man, he wears the old man mask as his protection. But when he gets older, he’ll invert into a young man’s soul and crave simple joys and laughter. Which is a fancy way of saying youth is wasted on the young.
We gossiped about the new kids. The new teachers. I like getting the unfiltered scoop from the students themselves. This is how you find out what’s really happening.
A. told me that he is shocked how quickly the new students are finding themselves. I thought about my intro speech Saturday night and how I described the new kids’ plunges into the unknown of Boundless as inherently courageous acts. Now I am rethinking this. The truth is, all of us adults, you parents especially, have condemned your children into a stint at paradise.
I cautioned A. that he should not count his chickens before they hatch. “It’s always a honeymoon the first few days”, I emphasized.
“Ya.” he said. “But it took me a month last year. It’s taken these guys a few hours.”
Which is to say, parents, that the school has started as beautifully as the mist itself.
I’ll write again in ten days, presumably after the s…t hits the fan. But I do wonder if A. is right. Maybe this group is special beyond the norm.
We shall see.
No news is good news. Here’s hoping that every last one of you shall not be hearing from me.
Unseasonably warm regards,
Steven
