August was always a depressing time of the year. In Northeast Ohio, August is hot, and schools are not built for air conditioning. August meant going back to school and sitting in a 7,000 degree classroom, sweating in your new school clothes and hoping your teacher seated you near the fan. However, like most kids, I found myself secretly excited about school starting because of one thing: new school supplies. Typically parents only sprung for new supplies in the fall, but if you were lucky enough to get something new in the middle of the year, it was the perfect school day blah's pick me up.
Kids today have cool school supplies, no doubt about that. Mechanical Pencils, Post-It notes and multi-colored highlighters seem commonplace. Though everyday when I watch my students sort through their school supplies, I can't help but think that they are missing out. School supplies in the 90s had so much more character. Let's take a quick trip down memory lane...
The Top 5 Things That Made School Cool and Drove Our Teachers Crazy
Everyone had one, probably because they went on sale at Office Max (and Marc's for all of you Northeast Ohio readers) for about 50 cents a piece before school started. They were 2 different colors, and it was likely every kids in the class would have the same one. They typically came in 2 sets of colors: one stereotypically "boy" and one stereotypically "girl." One year, I remember buying the blue and green box, and all the kids called me a boy. Then there was the bumps. Oh yes, the bumps. Any 90's kid would recognize the Spacemaker school box from a mile away because of it's decorative bumps. The coolest kids were the ones who had parents would would splurge on the White Out Pen, so they could color around the bumps with the White Out. The worst part was when someone dropped theirs, and class had to stop so everyone could help him pick up his crayons. The kids I see around schools today all have these wimpy little pencil pouches with zippers, which are super lame compared to the school boxes of my day.
If our entire generation develops back problems someday, it's pretty obvious why: everything we carried back and forth to school was so darn heavy! Kids today all have canvas pencil pouches and soft lunchboxes that can be stuffed down to the bottom of their backpack when empty. In the 90's every kid had a giant, square plastic lunchbox that could accommodate more food than our young stomachs could ever hold. Usually it had a picture of some sort of Disney character on the front, like Pocahontas or The Lion King. We filled them with Sprinklers Yogurt, Dunkaroos, and Capri-Sun juices*. When the trend shifted to soft lunchboxes, I'm sure teachers were relived, because the lunchbox basket probably got a lot lighter.
*Keep checking back for a special report from Brianna on what 90's kids packed in their lunches.
I never thought I'd be one of those adults who said "well, when I was your age..." However, I've recently caught myself thinking it when I see kids and those silly stretchy book covers. In my day, we had to cover our books with a paper bag. This was often quite a task. It began with making your mom buy something at the store and remembering to ask for paper instead of plastic. Next, teachers had to take a chunk of class-time to help everyone figure out the complicated folding/taping process. I suppose those stretchy ones don't rip as easily as paper bag covers, but the main perk of a paper bag cover was that you could write all over it. "I Love J.T.T. 4-Ever" just doesn't look as good drawn all over the stretchy covers.
A few years back, I was shopping for a friend's daughter's birthday party. She spotted some pink stickers featuring neon yellow puppies, and she squealed "Anne Frank Stickers!!!" Clearly, Anne Frank was not the correct name for the neon, girly goodness, but I certainly shared her enthusiasm. Lisa Frank provided us with a few colorful animal friends printed on everything from our school supplies to our clothes. In 5th grade, every student was required to have a trapper keeper, and every girl had one like the one pictured to the right. I wouldn't be surprised if teachers from the 90s are now suffering some sort of eye damage due to the large amounts of neon colored school supplies owned by their female students. I have just been inspired to dig out my old trapper keeper from under my bed and use it as a future grade book or something. It would probably make me the coolest teacher ever. Agreed?
Teachers hated them, kids hoarded them, and for some reason parents kept buying them. Gel Pens are the reason college professors have to write "Black and Blue pen only!" on their syllabus each semester. These were the good ol' days when you had to actually get out a sheet of wide ruled paper and write a note to your friend, instead of texting them underneath your desk. The number of gel pens you used in their note was directly correlated to how much you liked them. Nothing spruced up a mundane homework assignment like gel pens. Writing ten spelling words three times each was actually a little fun if you could use a different color for each word (and most kids had enough different colors to make the words 30 different colors). Unfortunately, teachers didn't share our excitement and banned the pens graded assignments.
-Patsy