Back to School

When we went to Target the other day I saw all the back to school stuff already out. It really seems that summer has just begun and yet kids are beginning to gather up their stuff for a new school year. Suddenly, I missed those days of picking out new school supplies: backpack, notebooks, pens, click pencils and erasers (my favorites), Trapper Keepers (remember those?), folders, calculators, and pencil boxes. Remember they used to make those thick cardboard ones? Now they're all plastic. There were all sorts of prints on them - maps of the world, cartoon characters, beach scenes, numbers and letters, etc. They would sit in your flip top desk holding your brand new crayons, erasers, pencils, and markers. I remember I always kept a neat desk; it drove me nuts to see other students with papers and books jammed into their desks in such disarray that they could hardly close them. Yep, even in elementary school, I was a neat freak.

It was always a struggle deciding which notebook to use for which subject. Does English look like red this year or yellow? Black usually went to Math, my least favorite subject ever.

I remember a long string of years where it was uncool to wear both shoulder straps of your backpack. Why, I have no idea, because it became ridiculously heavy to lug a heavy backpack with only one strap over your shoulder.

Peg legged jeans, really high bangs, flourescent clothes, and leggings came and went. When I watch movies with those sorts of fashions, I just cringe at how awful we must have all looked.

I remember high school mornings hanging out by the band room door, my ugly locker, eating lunch with friends, Mr. Kerouac getting mad at the saxophonists, English class always being the best, My Brown-Eyed Girl at school dances, scaring the pizza man at Julie's house, first love...this is starting to sound like what you'd sign in a yearbook...

Anyway, what do you remember about school?