School has started again (haven't you heard?) and I am put in mind of what I myself liked most about it as a child. Yes, I looked forward to seeing my friends again, and to meeting my new teacher. But what I liked most was getting new school supplies.
I know I'm not the only person in the world that can spend an hour or more very happily in an office supply store. I examine every pen in the never-ending quest to find the perfect instrument for everyday casual scribbling and drafting poems (letters, journal writing, and more formal writing in general are usually done with my beloved fountain pens). I haunt the paper aisle, pondering the merits of 100% cotton vs. those of a blend, and trying to decide between the classic elegance of white and the eye-soothing tranquillity of natural or ivory. Moving on to the notebooks and binders aisle, I fill my cart with folders and tablets, even though there is a plethora of both stashed in the shelves at home. I assure myself that they will all be used eventually. In the desk accessories and storage aisle, I gaze at the wide selection of containers that come in every conceivable size and shape, envisioning a home office that is more organized, compartmentalized, efficient ... then move on with perhaps only a pair of bookends added to my cart.
I believe this fondness for office stores is rooted in the excitement of getting new supplies every year for school. Being one of several children made the excitement even greater, because our parents would always take us shopping all together, and we'd each bring home a paper sack full of treasure. Then every day for the next few days, I would relish taking each item out of my sack with childish glee, marvelling at its pristine state and wishing it could stay that pristine always.
I loved the over-sized pencils we used in under school (being born late in the year, I went to under school rather than kindergarten) and the crayons that had one flat side which prevented them rolling off the desks. I loved the special tablets we used whose lines were divided by dotted lines that served as guides for forming letters, first in print, then later in cursive. I loved learning how to write cursive, am eternally grateful we were taught it, and am deeply appalled that young people today not only are unable to write in cursive but unable even to read it, and therefore cannot decipher the diaries their grandparents wrote and left to them, or the letters their grandparents wrote to one another during the war.
I loved the cigar boxes we were always obliged to have for keeping said pencils and other small objects together. There were the scissors with the rounded points, the jar of glue with its little brush affixed inside the lid, erasers and rubber bands. And there was my favorite item, the box of Crayola Crayons. I admit to being jealous of my classmates who had the big box of 120 crayons. For too many years I had only the box of 48 or 64, and when at last my mother consented to buy the long-coveted box of 120, my happiness was complete. I loved "cornflower blue," "midnight blue," "salmon pink," and "magenta," loved learning that "red orange" was just a reddish orange and "orange red" an orange-ish red.
When I reached the fourth grade, I was thrilled that pens were on the supply list for the first time. We had a choice of cartridge pens or ball points, and although even at that young age I preferred the nib to the ball, my parents insisted on the ease and convenience of the latter. Along with the pens, we were also required to have ink erasers. I always had the half-and-half, one half pink for pencil, the other half white for ink. Of course, the ink erasers never worked very well, as ink in those days was much darker and thicker than it is now, and I would rub my paper almost right through trying to erase my mistakes.
After a few days of school, both the pristine state of my school supplies and the heady blush of new ownership wore off. The inside of my cigar box soon bore lead scars from the pencils kept in it, my beloved Crayolas grew blunt and stunted, and I always lost the caps of my pens. But I would console myself with the knowledge that that school year would end and another begin, and with it would come once again the excitement of getting brand-new supplies.
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