Following To The Letter But Not The Intent

Our community seems to be waking up.

What I mean is that my little 'burb tends to go on vacation in the summer. Many can afford to take a trip for a week or two to visit family or go someplace fun. We live near two very popular lakes which gives lots of enjoyment to those that are into such fishing and water sports. We're within a couple of hours of some excellent camping locales. And summer sports leagues take our folks to various cities for tournaments and championships (who will all get their pictures in the "neighbors" insert in the paper in the coming weeks).

And, this is just what Texas wanted.

Last year our legislature passed a law (thanks to the travel industy lobby) that required the start of school to be the last week of August. In the past, local school boards could apply and get a waiver--and almost all of them, including ours, did so--to start as early as the first week of August. Most started around the middle of the month.

GREAT...

...right?

Not so much.

See, what the travel industry wanted was to have people taking advantage of the full summer to take one last trip to the lake or the beach or camp or golf or whatever else folks to do get away and relax.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the vacation:

The U.I.L. didn't change along with it. The U.I.L. is the governing body for the state that oversees pretty much all the extracurricular activities high schools participate in. For example, they align the football districts and provide the drama competition and band challenges and all that kind of thing. And they didn't change any of their requirements at all. In other words, in the past, they'd have a blanket rule that would say you couldn't begin practice or tryouts or whatever until, say, August 4. But now, their start dates stayed the same while the school year moved back two weeks.

And, I can't blame the teachers or coaches or sponsors, frankly. They're taking full advantage by having *ahem* "voluntary" workouts and practices and such. They've gotta keep up with all the other Joneses who are having their teens show up for two extra weeks of sharpening and polishing and marching--and make no mistake: There's a lot of competition in our parts & jobs eventually go on the line. So, they have their teens show up when it okay for them to show up. In reality, nothing wrong with that.

But that wasn't the intent of the law.

All the vacations were planned knowing that this was coming...so everybody's moseying back into town. I could tell this yesterday when I noticed our church attendance creeping into our annual fall attendance spike. We're not full-blown yet, which will be right after Labor Day, but once the kids all have to be back for practice/tryouts/etc., our community begins to have a different feel.

And it feels today like the beginning of the end of summer.