Here comes the school year. And every day, I hear families talking about making one last "getaway" — a fling before duty calls.

Kids, especially, are looking for one last gasp of freedom before entering the womb of education for nine months.

It's like Mardi Gras — a taste of liberty before the obligations of Lent set in.

It's like a diver taking a big gulp of fresh air before going beneath the waves.

One editor here just returned from five days with his family at Disneyland — though to hear him tell it, it was more like "Dizzyland."

More than a few of my friends and their families will be spending Labor Day on the freeway, madly in search of rest and relaxation.

It all makes me wonder.

Before coming to earth and all the tough lessons here, did we take a little vacation ourselves? Did we get away before coming down?

I wouldn't be surprised.

But if we did, I think it was with a difference.

I think those "pre-school" parties were more like the family dinners given for missionaries before they depart or the bridal and baby showers young women attend.

Rather than a last chance to do what we want before heading off to do what we must, I think they were celebrations of all that was to come.

They were parties held in anticipation, not out of dread — exciting moments at the doorway of new experience.

They weren't an escape.

They were happy farewells.

In fact, if we could all tune our attitudes to the right frequency, perhaps that's how we'd approach every new threshold we face.

Birthdays wouldn't be moments of mourning for our lost youth. They'd be exciting preludes to fresh years ahead.

Saturdays — more than a chance to "get things out of our system" before Sunday — would be fun because Sunday was approaching.

And Labor Day would be a day of expectation, a day for looking ahead to a year of study.

But none of that is going to happen, of course.

For the moment, human beings are just not wired that way. Seeing the world like that would mean re-tooling our brains. We'd have to become new creatures.

But then, on the other hand, maybe learning such things is a reason we were sent here to school in the first place.

e-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com