From School Bus to Party Bus.

Wow, back to school. 

It's here again, and doesn't take a stoned flock of Byrds to know that the season has turn turn turned, especially when the ads start showing up in the newspaper right next to the "Get a Bang out of your Fourth of July" male enhancement specials.

Pencils, paper, notebooks and Elmer's School Glue have invaded the grocery store end caps like an unwelcome visit from the entire Dugger clan. Lunch boxes aren't really boxes anymore; they're more like bags designed by NASA. No longer can you cruise home from Pay-n-Save with your metal Gilligan's Island lunch pail, complete with a matching Thermos that lasts about half a day until you drop it on the linoleum and infuse your milk with millions of colon-perforating glass shards. Oh well, tomorrow you'll have room for an extra Ding Dong.

I wonder if you can still get three Pee-Chees for a buck. What's a Pee-Chee, you ask? Never mind, young grasshopper, but please, read on.

The back-to-school aura in our house is slightly modified this season, as one of our resident scholars will venture north to commence her collegiate studies. Since her list of essentials has jumped considerably in size, the university kindly mailed us a pamphlet for incoming students. The cover is graced with the smiling mugs of thirteen students—nine white, three Asian and one guy who's possibly one-third Latino. 

Holy crap. Thank God she went to high school with some black people.

Listed inside are a few items most eighteen-year-old wouldn't think to pack along, like wash cloths, spray cleaner and laundry soap. Notice the basic hygiene theme there? The brochure also reminds the students to bring their cellphones, which is like reminding an inmate that he's got a quart-sized balloon full of meth in his rectal cavity. Always within reach, those doggone things are.

Candles and incense are prohibited in the literature, as are toasters and hotplates. Dang, I'm just glad those were okay back in my day. Nothing enticed a co-ed into my dorm room like the fresh aroma of a butterscotch mango candle, paired with freshly toasted Pop Tarts and beef-jerky-infused Top Ramen. 

Even without such props, the sartorial splendor of my wide-leg jeans and tight terry cloth shirt provided all the magnetism a young, feather-haired stallion could need. Okay, I took that line from a 1978 Penthouse Forum, but shoot, no hotplates or incense? Hunger and stench are the two enduring descriptors of dorm life throughout the ages.

We've got about six weeks before our girl takes off for Bellingham, so I've still got time to give her the scuttlebutt on college guys. I'll tell her that, while most of them mean well, their frontal lobes are profoundly underdeveloped and virtually no difference in higher thinking capacity exists between them and adult golden snub nosed monkeys. Both groups are prone to throwing things that originate inside their bodies, so steer clear.

It's true, look it up.