Buying school supplies as a child was almost as exciting as picking out a summer bathing suit or making a birthday wish list. After the long hot summer, we could not wait to step into the fresh start of a new year that was filled with nervous excitement and contemplation of who we would sit by, are there any new students, and how cool it would be in a new classroom one door closer to the opposite end of that hall we entered in the first grade.
School supplies seldom varied when we were growing up. The list contained pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, and glue. Oh, and there was that strange metal thing that could take out a person's eye, to be used in math, and yet my memory cannot drum up a single time I touched it. All of these treasures that would assist in many hours of writing and drawing all fit neatly into a cardboard pencil box.
In the early years the boxes were standard and generic, but it did not take long before the pencil boxes had commercialism splashed on them with cartoon characters and super heroes. Regardless, the memories of ripping into all those packages of school supplies and storing them neatly in that tiny box would come back fresh each year buying the same supplies for my growing sons. By then, plastic had emerged along with the new-fangled fifteen pocketed book bag, not that for me this would have helped.
Back in the day it was a fresh cardboard box, crisp and neat, absorbing the scents of wax, ink, and lead and glue fumes. There was not a mark or a scratch on it as we placed them inside our desk on top of the construction paper, loose leaf paper, and school books. Or at least that is how it began for each and every student on day one.
There were always those fellow students who began this ritual by my side and ended the year with all supplies so well attended they could have been used fresh the next year. And then there was mine by January. The box was frayed and one corner edge was coming undone. A couple of markers had dried up, having mysteriously lost their lids. The crayons were broken and paper was peeled back to allow for more color to be used. The glue had spilled and dried various times, but that strange silver thing that could take out an eye remained shiny.
It was never as bad as that one student each year who had the desk that the teacher swore rats had built a nest in. That desk that caused us to cringe and gasp every time he or she would begin to dig something out and a cascade of junk would spill onto the polished floor.
Every year I would look over at my fellow classmates and make a pact with myself I was going to remain organized. My desk would look just like Stephanie and Paige's come spring, and I would proudly wrap up my year neat and orderly. I thought of this the other day, transferring my work into my third planner for this year, digging through pens at my desk to see which ones still had ink, and scrambling through folders with half jotted ideas. A half a century later and the pact has yet to be fulfilled. Some of us just do not have what it takes to be that person.
Some of us will invariably strive to reach that crisp shiny world of perfect organization where there is a place for everything and everything has a place. Where there are no junk drawers or planners in disarray. Until then, for many of us well-wishers life is like a pencil box or a clogged up desk. I guess it keeps life eventful. You never know what you are gonna get.
