First Day of School, Brooklyn So today is the first day of public school in New York City. My three kids are all old hands at this by now, so the drop-off was easy. They're going into second, fifth and eighth grades. For some reason, the eighth grader doesn't begin school until tomorrow, so he got to go back to his elementary school to see off his younger brother and sister. He was fawned over by his old teachers, who seemed truly amazed that he is now a very tall 13-year-old. I could tell he was enjoying the attention until it happened that the director of his middle school has a second grader he was dropping off; my 13-year-old quickly vanished. In the classrooms it was as it ever was - with the notable difference (from my grade-school days, at least) that the pupils are expected to provide the class with much of its supplies. The second graders all shouldered giant backpacks filled with boxes of markers and crayons, dozens and dozens of sharpened pencils, rolls of tape, extra notebooks, paintbrushes, cleaning products and so forth. At each desk was a list printed in the much-maligned Comic Sans, but that's how the kids knew these instructions were for them. I love the industry of the second-grade classroom. This feeling will vanish by next week, probably, but the humming efficiency of the first day of school is wondrous. And I also love the unassailable logic of keeping the tissues in the country-music corner, where I expect the entire class will huddle after lunch and sniffle along to Hank Williams songs.