The first day of school was successfully documented at 7:58 a.m., on the forty-first attempt.

The photograph shows a child standing beside a front door holding a small chalkboard sign. In thirty-nine of the preceding frames the child was blinking, in motion, or expressing an opinion. In the fortieth, the sign was upside down.

“We have the shot,” said parent Delia Marchetti-Fahey, reviewing it at 7:59. “It is not the shot I pictured. It is the shot.”

The Bureau of Domestic Documentation reports that the average household attempts thirty-four photographs on the morning in question, retains one, and will attempt the same number next year, having learned nothing.

“The parent is not photographing the child,” said Bureau analyst Dr. Serafina Oyelowo-Blunt. “The parent is photographing an entire year, in advance, before it has had the opportunity to go wrong.”

At 7:41 the child had declined the shoes purchased for this purpose in August and selected instead a pair that no longer fit and were, by every available measure, the wrong shoes. Negotiations lasted nine minutes and concluded with the wrong shoes.

The Institute for Pedagogical Optimism notes that the first day is the only day on which the household routine performs to specification: the alarm was honoured, breakfast was eaten sitting down, and the bag had been packed the previous evening by an adult who described the feeling as “finally being on top of it.”

“It holds until Wednesday,” said Institute director Dr. Ambrose Teale. “In unusually strong households, Thursday.”

The supply list was met in full, including the glue stick, which was specified by brand, width, and adhesive character. Institute researchers note that such lists are not written by pedants but by people who have personally witnessed what happens when the glue stick is wrong.

Staff greeted arrivals with the phrase “fresh start,” which the Institute classifies as professional optimism rather than a forecast. Corridors, dormant since June, were observed at 8:20 attempting to remember how to be corridors.

Marchetti-Fahey returned to a house that was, for the first time in eleven weeks, completely silent. She described the silence as wonderful for approximately eleven minutes, and then looked at the photograph again.

The child later reported that the day had been “fine.” Pressed for detail, they added that there had been a chair.