“Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years. “
Just as I went to get the newspapers it started to rain, not mist but heavy drops of rain. I went anyway. I got wet and I got chilly. The rain has since stopped though it is still a bit dark, but every now and then I can see the sun fighting its way through the clouds. I think it will be a sunny afternoon.
We never had to do much back to school shopping. We wore uniforms so new clothes weren’t necessary. We got new shoes, new socks and new underwear. We had to go to the shoe store and have our feet measured before my mother could buy the shoes. They were always sturdy shoes which had to last as long as possible. I’d show my mother what I wanted, and she’d shake her head and show me what she wanted. We seldom agreed. I always lost. The socks were white or blue to match the uniform. The underwear was always cotton and always the same brand, Lollipop, a strange name for underwear. The underwear was never stylish, but it wouldn’t have embarrassed my mother had I been in an accident.
The best school shopping was for supplies. We’d buy a school bag usually one of those square ones with buckles and a couple of pockets, a notebook and some lined paper. My favorite new supplies were the pencil box and the lunch box. Those took time to choose. It couldn’t be just any lunch box. I wanted a character lunch box, maybe somebody I watched on TV like Annie Oakley or Rin Tin Tin. My mother never objected to whichever one I wanted. The pencil boxes had illustrations on the front usually of kids walking to school or sitting at their desks. The insides of the boxes were mostly identical: pencils, a 6 inch ruler, a small pencil sharpener, colored pencils, maybe an eraser and always a protractor, a complete mystery to me. I had no idea what it was and why it was. I had a ruler so I didn’t need it to draw straight lines. We never used it in school for anything. Once in a while in art I’d make a circle using it, but that was it. It mostly just took up space.
I used to look at my supplies and open and close the pencil box a few times. I’d put the supplies in my school bag, put the bag cross my shoulder and pretend I was going to school. It was a dress rehearsal of sorts. I was never sorry to go back to school.
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August 22, 2014 at 12:09 pm
We didn’t use protractors in school until sixth grade but in periods we did use it a lot in math class. But we never had to buy lunch boxes or pencil boxes since we got free lunch at school and they also provided for pencils and any kind of vriting materials like paper and rubbers and so on.
We did buy new school bags though and I usually wanted a biog sports bag where lots of things would fit and later on in high school I wanted rucksacks and still use that most times.
I loved going back to school 🙂 sometimes I wish I still went there but I guess I might have gotten tired of it by now 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
August 22, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Christer,
We always had to buy our supplies except in public school where paper was supplied, nothing else just paper. It was all sorts including graph and drawing.
I always liked school but I reached my limit when I got my master’s. I was done with school finally. Now I wouldn’t mind a course or two for fun. I was thinking of adult school and a fun course like cake decorating.
The kids have a week and a half left before school starts here but in other districts school has started or will start next week. The cape is starting to slow down a bit.
Have a great evening.
August 22, 2014 at 4:30 pm
I hope you got your sun this afternoon. I’m visiting my folks in northern CT and the sun never emerged today or yesterday.
August 22, 2014 at 4:35 pm
sprite,
I got abut 5 minutes of sun in the early afternoon. It never rained again but it stayed dark, damp and cloudy.
August 22, 2014 at 6:47 pm
Shopping for school cloths and school supplies was always a big event in our house. In the Dallas school system boys could wear blue jeans and my mother always bought me Lee jeans. In those days Levi’s only came with a button fly and my mother knew that I didn’t have the planning capability for buttons and might have had an accident while unbuttoning. We could also wear tee shirts so the big choice was either Ked’s or Converse tennis shoes. I leaned towards Ked’s high tops in black.
When I moved to NY in the middle of the eighth grade I was shocked to discover that jeans called dungarees, tees and tennis shoes called sneakers were verboten and neck ties were required for boys. Thankfully those dress codes are a thing of the past.
I used the protractor in my tenth grade geometry class to measure angles. In elementary school I always lusted for the big box of Crayola crayons but my mother would only buy the box with 24 colors. I remember one year having to buy a fountain pen and a bottle of ink. Of course being left handed my attempt to write with a fountain pen created a mess as my left hand smeared the letters I had just written. My grade school teachers never taught me to turn my paper in the correct direction to write left handed and therefore I curve my hand over the top of the paper. Too late to correct now because the law of primacy rules everything.
Another dry 100 degree day. This is only our 16th triple digit day in 2011 we had 56 days of 100 plus temperatures. The low temperature this morning was 80 degrees.
August 22, 2014 at 10:08 pm
Bob,
I was in a parochial school so we wore uniforms, but in the public schools jeans and t-shirts were not allowed. The shirts had to have collars so sweaters with no shirts underneath were also not allowed. Unlike in New York, ties were not required.
I used it in high school as well, but I still don’t get why they were in pencil boxes only younger kids carried. I don’t remember how many crayons we got but I know at Christmas it was always the largest box. I love a good fountain pen and used them all the time. I didn’t have to, but I liked the way the writing looked with them.
You, even with all the 100˚ days, have had a cooler summer too. Our Augusts are usually ugly: humid and hot. This year every day has been in the 70’s. It has been the best summer for weather.
August 23, 2014 at 12:17 am
Handwriting is a huge waste of time in today’s world. I don’t know why we bother to teach it to kids in school these days. The time would be better spent on other subjects that have meaning in the 21st Century. If a kid can type and print a note as well as signing his name he can do anything in today’s world.
My handwriting is a horrible mess and my printing is only slightly improved. Thank goodness for typing and the iPad. I use the notes app to jot down things I need to remember and I use a couple of apps to write reports or anything more than a quick note. My PC at work and my Mac at home allow me to type things that other’s might want to read. Or, at least be able to decipher. I’m also grateful for spelling and grammar check software. The hand held calculator was also a wonderful tool during my aviation career.
Left handedness was always a pain in the rear in school. Those desks that were designed for a righty to rest their forearm on and write on a small table area on the right side of the chair for a left handed person is pure torture. Fountain pens, lead pencils and even ball point pens gave me fits because my hand was forced to write in an unnatural position covering up the words I had written. After leaving school I discovered that lefties who were younger then me were taught to turn their paper in the other direction and write with the left hand just like righties. My elementary school teachers must have been either sleeping or hung over during that class while in Teacher college 🙂
August 23, 2014 at 12:29 am
Bob,
Many schools do not teach cursive writing any more. I understand how much sense it makes, but I do worry because kids now print their names, not write them. Soon enough everyone will just be using an X for a name the way they did in the really old days.
I find the grammar program wanting. It makes changes made which are not correct. Today mine questioned “they’re” and wanted me to use “their” instead. Similar changes happen often and I find it frustrating. Relying purely on programs of this type will create errors which the writer will neither recognize nor understand why they are wrong.
When we were in school, teachers hadn’t ever been taught how to instruct left-handed writers. Many tried to make lefties righties which made it even worse for the poor kid. The ones younger than you were taught to turn their papers because that began to be taught in colleges.
August 23, 2014 at 7:45 am
Instead of signing with an X we could have the kid create a unique signature. This is what they do in Mexico. Each person designs a distinctive signature that is registered with the government. The next generation won’t even need the X because everything will be an electronic signature,
August 23, 2014 at 9:12 am
Bob,
Everything becomes computerized so schools have to teach very little in the future. Just plug the kid in.