Going (Way) Back to School

Most days I fancy myself to be young, especially if there are no mirrors around. But some things instantly make me feel old, like waking up, being called ‘Ma’am’ and seeing families shopping for back to school stuff. 

It seems like only yesterday my mother took us shopping for school clothes at Almy’s Warehouse, which was located in Shetland Park. My brother Stephen, 9 years my junior, would sit in the child seat of the carriage grabbing at the wheeled clothing racks as we passed by, dragging half of the juniors section through the store with us.  

 

Finances were tight, but that didn't stop us from wearing the current trends, which one year included an entire wardrobe of hot pant outfits accompanied by white plastic go-go boots. My back to school hairdo was dark brown roots emerging from faux blonde hair- the result of an obsessive use of “sun in” - a hair bleaching spray made out of some kind of combination of lemon juice and Clorox that was wildly popular.

In a back to school time capsule somewhere exists the ancient tools that were essential- a pencil box, #2 pencils with a sharpener, erasers in funny shapes, a ruler and a protractor (look it up- and don’t ask me why we needed it, but we all had one). These were stored inside our wooden desks with lift up covers and generations of initials and secret messages carved so deep you had to use a notebook under your paper to be able to write on them.

In pre-computer days, looking up information was a long, labored process. If your family could afford it, you had a full encyclopedia set that was sold door to door. But if you were poor, you might only have volumes A through C because you tried to collect them when they were on sale and ran out of money. Any subject starting with D-Z required me to walk to Salem Library, causing me to write a lot of papers about subjects like the Atmosphere, the Baroque period and the history of Cats in Culture.

The revelation that cursive writing is a useless skill that will no longer be taught in schools came about 40 years too late for me, with penmanship being my most hated subject. I would spend hours trying to morph my unique style (translation= unreadable) into the generic examples, making sure my lower case letters fell below the red dotted line on the handwriting grids. I’ve never written anything in cursive since then, perhaps in protest over being graded so harshly for something so distinctly individual.  

Before calculators, we learned a finger tapping method that was one step above an abacus. In math class, we’d be called up one by one to do the multiplication tables, which involved laying both hands face down on the desk while the teacher tapped a ruler rhythmically in between them to the beat of us reciting “8, 16, 24, 32….”, with each incorrect answer causing the ruler to stray and swat the back of our hand.

Public humiliation was doled out freely as punishment, including one gross injustice that resulted in my having to write “I will not be an Indian giver” 100 times on the chalkboard, wrong on so many counts I wouldn’t know where to begin. Even worse, I was too short to reach the top of the blackboard so I had to keep getting on and off a little ladder as the class snickered behind me. Combine this with my unreadable handwriting and the teacher finally got sick of me somewhere around number 54 and told me to just go home because he was late for dinner.

These memories flood my thoughts as I wait in the check out at Target, surrounded by back to school families. As the cashier rings in my household purchases, he says “back to college, huh?” I correct him by saying “No, I don’t have kids”. “I meant you” he says with a wink.

Which instantly make me feel young again, reminding me that no matter how old you are, there is always someone else who thinks you are just a ‘kid’.