SCHOOL DAYS .......
.....Good old Golden Rule days!
Long hidden recesses in a desk drawer revealed some artifacts from days long gone by. Remember those orange Goldenrod tablets with the lined yellow paper? And the Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils that were the only kind allowed?
The girls were the only students who appreciated the erasers that were passed out. The boys would drill holes in their erasers with their pencils or protractor points. They preferred to wet a finger and try to erase that way, despite the fact that they always wore a hole in the paper.
Girls always hoped that they would be issued a ruler that a boy hadn't used the year before. Boys all had a skill in ripping out that nice metal edge that was embedded in the top of the ruler. If they didn't get it completely removed, there was a nice wicked strip of metal waiting to jab the person who stuck a hand way back in a desk!
The graduation to using ink was a step up in the world. We were required to provide a pen holder, a nib of a certain kind, a blotter, and a pen wiper (a hemmed piece of flannel). Boys preferred to clean their pens on their tongues and the teacher had only to look at a person to see who had done THAT!
Being chosen to fill the ink wells on desks was a mark of distinction and a position of responsibility. Evidence that it was not easy to hit that little well was quite clear on most desks! But as we progressed through the grades and acquired some degree of physical agility (in other words, not so clumsy) we were permitted to buy our own ink.
Oh, that cute bottle of Scripto ink. And that darling little reservoir on the side to dip the pen into. However, if the user did not screw the cap on tightly before tipping the bottle to refill the reservoir, well, you remember what happened. Perhaps the ball point pen was the invention of the ages.
Remember that intoxicating smell from the purple-print mimeographed pages that the teacher had just cranked out of the mimeograph machine? We'd all smell the page we were handed, but only the boys would act drunk!
That brand new box of crayons was delightful in those earliest years. Teacher put our name on our box so that we would know what it looked like. In our first attempt to copy our names, one student laboriously printed "8 Crayola" because it was on the box! Boys usually ate their crayons in the first month and had to use from the 'broken' box. At least that cut down on the paste they consumed. In upper grades, they simply chewed on paper.
Teachers have been accused of spending more time with boys than with girls, but, really, is that so hard to figure out?
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