Is it just me, or does it seem like only yesterday when we were reading about our area graduates and seeing notices about Vacation Bible school ? Here it is back to school time already. Where does the time go?
Reading in the newspaper the list of school supplies needed by each grade gave me a chuckle. Are you serious, a kid needs all this stuff to go to school nowadays? Holey Moley, and to think we made it with a new notebook and pencil bag!
Oh, how I hated the summers to end. The thought of a new year at school filled me with dread ó at least while I was busy playing outside. Sometime, just before Labor Day, Mama would take me to the store for a new pair of shoes; then we’d go buy a pack of notebook paper, a new notebook and pencil bag and box of pencils. THEN, I was outfitted for school. My brother, being older, had to have a compass and maybe a ruler. Anyway, I thought his stuff was neater than mine, and I had real compass envy until I was old enough to need one, maybe fifth grade.
It was always an occasion, when my own children were small to find out who their teacher was going to be. You took who you got, but all of us girls were secretly hoping that weíd get that dreamy Mr. Brown. Sometime in the middle of my fifth grade year, he announced his engagement to another teacher, and talk about heart broken! To add insult to injury, I got sick one day and had to walk to the front of the class and whisper into Mr. Brownís ear that I thought I was going to throw up. How embarrassing.
Seems to me though, that summers get shorter and shorter , and I know for a fact, it is NOT because I am getting older. Iíve barely aged 10 years in the last 20; no, I think itís because we get distracted and just do not realize how quickly the time goes. Barely do we get over the 4th of July, when all of a sudden weíre staring Labor Day right in the face!
Well, back to the school supplies. The one thing I did enjoy was getting new books, since I have been a lover of the written word all my life. To smell that new book aroma, open it up and have all those words and pictures to thumb through. Even if we used books from the previous year, they were new to us, and I would very carefully write my name in the top righthand corner. In college, sometimes the future spouse and I would have the same class, so weíd share a textbook. Just not the same thrill as having your very own. As for the backpacks and other things on that list, our parents, Iím afraid, would think it all just frivolous nonsense. Use your head, was their cry. Couldnít figure a math problem out? We didn’t have calculators; we had to use our heads.
Every generation thinks it had it the roughest, I suppose, and my own offspring are convinced I wrote on slate with chalk or hammered something in a rock. We were not that primitive, but times were simpler. School went from 8 in the morning until 3:30 every day, and if your school had no cafeteria, like one of mine, you either took your lunch in a sack or you walked home to eat. I usually walked home and it gave me the opportunity to cut through a neighborís yard and steal rhubarb from their garden. Another elementary school I went to served one of two dishes for lunch: spaghetti or sloppy joes. Guess that’s why, to this day, I am not overly fond of sloppy joes.
Well, school memories are some of the best, and each generation makes its own. Things change, and time marches on. I suppose 20-30 years from now people will talk about going to the office supply department and picking up a new iPad for school. Iím just glad all we had to worry about was a pack of notebook paper and a new pencil bag!
Janet McCanless lives in Salisbury.