Back-to-school hype brings back some good and some not so good memories

I shut down the computer and turned around in my chair. As usual, my husband was flipping through TV channels faster than a speeding bullet. Waving the smoke from the remote away from my face I said, "I can't believe the back-to-school hype on the Internet."
"Like?" he asked, as he watched some guy pitching camouflage clothing during a commercial.
"Well, you should see the things they are pitching to parents to buy for their kids. Cell phones in colors to match their kid's clothing, laptops, iPods, stuff like that."
"That's a far cry from what we had or needed when I went to school," he said.

I sat there thinking the same thing. My school supplies consisted of a package of number two pencils and a Big Chief tablet. The school furnished everything else. I would get four of five plaid seersucker dresses in different colors in the same style, because once we found something that fit me we stayed with it.

But when it came to shoes, we had a fight on our hands. My dad insisted on these gawd-awful shoes that looked like something OSHA requires now, if you work in a factory, only mine didn't have steel toes. I know that part of my childhood stuck with me because I haven't owned a sensible pair of shoes since.

When my train of thought broke I looked to see that my husband had turned off the TV.

"So," I asked, "What was it like when you were in school?"
He looked pretty serious for a second. "I went to a school in a one room log school house with a bell tower on top. The building was so run down that poles propped it up on one side to keep it from falling over. It was our school during the week and our church on Sundays."
"Wait just a minute!" I said. "Didn't I see this on a Little House on the Prairie episode?"
"Go ahead and make fun. You wouldn't know what it was like, for sure," he said. "We had about fifteen kids in grades one through six and we all just grew up in that school room with each other. We didn't have families moving in and out, it was just all people we knew, a lot of brothers and sisters. All our subjects were in one book and we shared books. The teacher had a big can of crayons and we all shared those. You could tell which kids were better off because their overalls were worn in places but not patched. Lunch was a sweet tator and cold homemade biscuit with a sausage patty. It was the same thing everyday, but it always tasted good."
"Did you have a lunch box?" I asked, remembering all the latest fad boxes I always had.
"Shoot no! If you were lucky you had a sack and you kept that sack and used it over and over again. But most of the time we just wrapped our lunches in used newspaper."

When he said that, I felt a twinge of guilt at the times my friends and I popped bags just to make noise. As I looked up again I saw something cross my husband's face.
"What?" I asked.
"I was just remembering Elvin Harris. None of the kids ever had any money but one time one of the boys found a nickel and he Lorded that nickel over us for days. Then one day I shot and killed a snowbird with my slingshot and this kid tells Elvin Harris that he will give him the nickel if he will bite the bird's head off. Elvin was a big ole kid, really nice and really backwards. Anyway, Elvin bit the head off and then this other kid started to finagle on the bet and wasn't going to give Elvin the nickel. Elvin was going to let him get away with it, but man I came unglued. I wasn't a very big kid myself, but before it was over I made sure Elvin had his nickel."

"Well, I sure can't top that story," I said. "Did you ever wish you had things a little better in school?"
"No, I never even thought about it. We were all in the same boat so we didn't know any different. How about you, were you happy in school?" he asked.
"I loved elementary school," I replied. "But, if I knew then what I know now. I honestly think I could have talked my dad out of having to wear those sensible shoes. Who knows how much smarter I'd be today if I could have worn black patent Mary Janes."

"Editor's Note: This column first appeared in the 2002 fall issue of Today's Woman. The column won first place for Best Nostalgia Article in 2003 from the Missouri Writer's Guild.