The Thrill of New School Supplies
An old friend from grade school called me the other day. “I’ve made an escape from the house right now and am taking a LONG time to run my errands,” she confessed. “I just can’t seem to pull myself away from all these school supplies! I knew you would understand why I, a grown woman, would be pawing through all these new spiral notebooks. Do you remember how much fun it was to get new notebooks every year? Oh, look, here’s one with a cute paisley print and a flexible cover, you know, the kind that won’t get dog-eared…”
So began the discussion of our shared fetish for school supplies. The way some folks study Fashion Week in Paris is the way we still study what Mead and Crayola have wrought every August. Although her son is only in preschool, she confesses that she can’t resist a new, pristine notebook and a pack of pencils for herself. And were 70 sheet notebooks ever just 15 cents each back in our day? Did I remember what a commitment it was to choose a five-subject spiral notebook in high school, and the importance of the dividers? Affecting the little curves on our N’s and M’s as we developed a distinctive (we thought) handwriting? And the leap from wide rule to narrow rule, an indication of our growing maturity and worldliness?
You might be thinking you have better things to do with your time than reminisce about school supplies. But we began to recognize that kids today just don’t have the capacity to appreciate supplies like we did. Take crayons.
Think about it: Kids now have crayons readily available to them at every restaurant. At first, crayons were in a big basket at the hostess stand to be grabbed by the handful for doodling on the kids’ menu. Now restaurants have caught on that crayons are expected, so they’re usually individually wrapped in packets of three or four. While we moms were in grade school, we learned to ration our pack of eight crayons to keep the black one from overuse. In contrast, our kids have brand new crayons thrust into their hands every week.
Kids aren’t worried about maintaining a sharp crayon point or peeling the wrapper down carefully. Have yours ever even worked a crayon down to a nub? Probably not, since it is too easy to get replacements. At this particular moment, Office Max is selling packs of 24 crayons for 1 cent, limit three. Imagine, 72 crayons for the price of a forgotten nickel in your sofa cushions.
There was no more effective method for learning colors than crayons and the package of 64. These taught us the difference between a red orange and a red violet, although it’s doubtful that the boys got the lesson (would your husband think magenta is a color or a historical figure?). Now color literacy is less assured. All the colors used to have obvious names like ”sky blue” or “copper.” Now there’s color called “razzmatazz.” That’s not a color, folks, that’s just marketing. You will never hear someone say, “We’re painting the bedroom a warm razmatazz tone.” The word isn’t even suitable for poetry.
As my friend and I grew philosophical over the abundance of crayons, we agreed that we ourselves have lost the reverence we once had for them. Nowadays we’re shaking them out of backpacks and cursing any that make it to the dryer. Years ago, we might have saved these old crayons for Girl Scouts and melted them into a candle or stained glass (crayon shavings ironed between waxed paper, an old standard). Now we have no use for them.
“Would you believe they make packs of 120 crayons?” she exclaimed, and we were both horrified at the thought of them scattered throughout our houses. Alas, we realized we’ve grown old the day we can’t get excited about crayons and all the possibilities within 120 colors.
“I’d better go,” she said wistfully. “They’ll be looking for me.” I understood. At least she got herself a new notebook, not to practice handwriting or to make cryptic notes to pass, but to draft lists for errands like this one.
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