Back to school

This was a big deal when I was a kid. I've talked before about going to Miller's Stride-Rite (in the Chapel Hill Mall) to buy "school shoes" - which were usually some kind of hard-soled, lace-up shoe. (I guess most kids now wear tennis shoes as their school shoes.). I guess tennis-shoes-as-school shoes either (a) was not allowed by the schools back then, (b) it wasn't "done" in the 1970s as it is today or (c) My doctor told my parents that I needed shoes with more "support" as I had flat feet.

And a few pieces of clothing were bought. Back then, I often wore a dress or jumper on the first day of school. I guess I wore pants some of the time, but dresses/jumpers were more common little-girl-wear back then than I think they are now. (I also remember getting matching shorts to wear under the dresses, so I could do penny drops and the like on the playground without anyone seeing my underwear). Usually the first day of school was a big dress-up day, or at least in my family it was.

And then there were the school supplies. I don't remember how the lists were distributed back then, if they were in the paper or if we were given them on the first day of school or what, but I know stores didn't make lists available like they do now. (The local wal-mart has a kiosk right in the front door, with slots for each local school and its list). The lists of what we needed were also less-detailed back then; now some of the lists seem to specify even down to brand. (And I know I have heard friends complain about how some stores sell out of a certain item, and how hard it is to track that thing down. Though I don't know; perhaps increasingly people order stuff from Amazon or places like that. That would make sense to me)

I don't remember there being that many different specifications - I do know we weren't permitted ball-point pens as writing utensils until perhaps third grade? (Make something forbidden and it becomes attractive - I remember what a big deal it was to be allowed a pen in school. It was only later I learned how crummy those "erasable" pens - the kind we were recommended to have - were). And it was suggested strongly that we have the 24-pack of crayons rather than any other amount. I suppose that may have been because some parents would buy their kids the 64-count box and those kids would lord it over the kids whose parents only sprang for the 8-pack. (I don't know if the 96-count boxes were available back then; it seems to me the 64-count box - the one with the sharpener in the back - was the Holy Grail of the crayon world).

I do know my parents bought me the prescribed box for school but also got me the big box for coloring at home...

Some of my friends who have kids now say some schools collect the supplies, put them in a common box, and then distribute them. (There's an interesting lesson in there, and perhaps not the one the school intends). So a sort of Tragedy of the Commons thing happens - there's a race to buy the cheapest stuff, because who knows if your kid will get back what they brought in, so why spend the extra money? So everyone winds up with sort of crummy supplies....scissors that break, off-brand crayons...

In my day, you kept what you brought in. True, some kids had worse supplies than others, some had really flashy fancy stuff, and most of us had average stuff. (We also were not expected to supply tissues and hand sanitizer for the classroom, which I guess is the case now in some places).