Why does this keep happening to me? I am a veteran of almost 20 years of my very own first days of school, and I've had plenty of trauma added by life's little curveballs.

My mom peeled me off her leg when I entered kindergarten, and I switched schools before the fourth grade. Then middle school came along, and so did the zits, raging hormones, awkwardness, and the crackly voice. As an added bonus, my parents split up. So we moved, and I had my first day of middle school 350 miles away from my previous comfort zone. To make matters worse, the hottest babe in sixth grade was nice enough to welcome me to Columbia by saying, "You talk like a girl."

Then came high school, which was a welcome relief from the three years of hell known as middle school, but then I got to go to college. At the time, I didn't realize that most kids' parents took them to school, so I rode up to Clemson with my cousin. He was already a senior in college and, unlike me, he had not spent his previous night lying in bed terrified. In fact, I'm not sure he had made it to bed at all. Truth is, if I had been a little earlier, I'm pretty sure I would have had to pick him up at Jungle Jim's in Five Points. But after some serious shaking and a lot of noise, my cousin made it off the couch and on to Clemson, and so did I.

Despite the occasional recurring nightmare where I've lost my schedule, forgotten to pay my tuition, and walked into Physics 101 buck- naked, I did survive my first days of school with very few lasting emotional scars, and the phrase "Back to School" didn't phase me for the 11 years after that last graduation.

And then my wife and I had children…three of them to be exact.

So my years of peaceful coexistence with the educational world came to an abrupt end in 2003. Because of children, my anxiety has increased exponentially. Not only that, now there's an element of depression to go along with the first days of school.

Literally, it felt like yesterday when I was walking my oldest child into kindergarten, and the other day I dropped her off in the sixth grade. It feels like her little sister, my youngest daughter, is still supposed to be in a bouncy seat spitting up her apple sauce, but after I dropped her older sister off, I walked her into the fourth grade. She politely posed for a picture with her teacher for me, and then quickly ran off to see her friends forgetting all about her old man. And finally, my baby boy - the one who kept wife and me up all night crying for the first three- and- a- half years of his life - scooted off to first grade. He too posed for a ceremonial picture, and then shooed me off to began writing his assignments.

None of my children had slept the night before this first day of school, and they all claimed to be nervous and scared. They seemed to lose that anxiety the minute they walked into school, and, of course, I found it … to go along with the heaping helping of depression.

Children grow up so fast. One minute they're working a pacifier sleeping peacefully in your arms, and the next minute they politely shoo you away so you don't embarrass them.

Nothing I experienced in middle school was ever this painful.