No matter what I’m doing with my life, the day after Labour Day will be the first day of school. New pens, binders, notebooks. That carefully selected first day of school outfit, the one bought a month in advance, the one I fought the urge to wear on every other seemingly important (or not important) occasion because the outfit is so beautiful and exciting and transformative, and fighting the urge is akin to teenage hormones because that urge is so strong that knowing the rush of wearing it into class that first day will destroy my body with intensity that I can hold off. But I digress. I miss that feeling, that spark.

School leads me to television. But what in my life doesn’t? Everyday I would run home to my failed seafarers, the castaways from the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan’s Island. I’m not one of those women who’s going to pretend I wanted to be Mary Ann. Hell no. Ginger all the way. Glamorous, untouchable. She wore gowns on a deserted island and her styled ginger hair was always without a wisp astray. Mr and Mrs. Howell were also pretty great. And that idiot Gilligan was like a post-school day saviour.

Yesterday, the day before school I went boating. My afternoon languorous and lovely, snacktastic, full cooler, meeting strangers, diving through the water. I’ve spent more of my living years in classrooms than not. And certainly more time in classrooms than on boats. But yesterday, for four brief hours I could pretend that the next day might be exciting, hold promise, that for a few hours I was Miss Ginger, bikini clad and tipsy, rolling along the ocean, feeling something.