Do-Over!

Haunted by the failures of his youth, a middle-aged husband and father goes back to school—elementary school.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Life

Robin Hemley in kindergarten at Horace Mann Elementary School in Iowa City, Iowa. Photo by Alex Sheshunoff.

In Hollywood, there’s a long tradition of films in which a child inhabits an adult’s body—Big, Billy Madison, 13 Going on 30, and most recently, 17 Again. “But as far as I know, no one had ever done it for real,” says educator Robin Hemley about attending grade school and attempting to “do-over” defining events from his formative years—the SAT and his role in a “disastrous” school play, for example.

Not only did Hemley’s experiences yield a unique book—“Do-Over! In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments” (Little, Brown)—they provide him with rare perspective on how childhood has changed since the 1960s. Failure recently phoned Hemley to find out what it’s like to be—quite literally—a big man on campus, and whether knowing what he knows now made any difference the second time around.

What inspired you to go back to school?
The idea just hit me one day. I was talking to some friends and said, “Wouldn’t it be fun to try to go back to summer camp and be the sports hero that I never was?” My friends thought it was a funny idea. So I proposed it to New York magazine and they said, “Sure, if you can get your camp to let you go back.” The camp liked the idea, too. Of course, they had me go through a background check, same as a [prospective] counselor would.

I had such a great time at camp that after the article came out I decided to come up with more “fender-benders” from my childhood—not real traumas, but fender-benders that I wanted a second shot at. It took me about five minutes to come up with a list. continue....