School supplies nostalgia
Some of my stash! (Photo; DY, 2013)
If you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you walk through the aisles of your local Staples or Office Depot, there’s a good possibility that you’re caught in the grip of a condition we might call school supplies nostalgia. If mere mentions of terms such as “Trapper Keeper” and “Crayola 64” trigger pangs of sentiment, then you’re really deep into it. And if you’re a parent whose school supply purchases for your kids are influenced by memories of your own pencil boxes and notebooks, well, perhaps we need to talk about counseling options.
School supplies nostalgia can happen to someone of any age, but those of us who went to grade school in the days before everything went digital are especially susceptible. Shopping for school supplies was part of our fall ritual, and our local retail stores would stock up on them in preparation for the annual onslaught.
If you have this condition, the good news is you’re not alone. Google “school supplies nostalgia” and you’ll see what I mean.
More than soggy sentiments
Childhood memories may be at the core of school supplies nostalgia, but there’s more to it than that. Crayons, pens, index cards, notebooks, and simple blank paper were among our earliest forays into creating, expressing, and preserving our emerging knowledge, ideas, and art. They served as open invitations to use our minds.
As the regimens of memorization, testing, and grading become a bigger part of our lives, it seems like those invitations are withdrawn from us. I fear that a lot of creative lights are snuffed out that way.
Try it out
So . . . perhaps the school supplies aisles aren’t just for kids.
If you’re a writer, artist, or other creative sort (or want to be!), try this out: The next time you want to do some thinking and brainstorming at your local coffee shop or library, leave your laptop at home. Instead, bring a notebook and pen and spend an hour or two jotting down thoughts, ideas, and lists or making drawings and doodles.
Maybe we all should put our gadgets away long enough to express ourselves on paper. A lined sheet of paper or ruled notebook allows us to preserve our thoughts and ideas in our own handwriting. A blank page or sketchbook invites us to draw, diagram, and imagine.
Before you know it, you’ve got your own portfolio of stuff, and you never had to worry about clearing a jam in the printer.
75 reasons you may be a Gen Joneser
1. You know what happened on “a three hour tour” (and can finish the theme song!).
2. You got annoyed when corn kernels spilled into the dessert compartment of your TV dinner.
3. You first knew of John Glenn as an astronaut.
4. You know that Laura Petrie came before Mary Richards.
5. You were ecstatic to have access to an electric typewriter to do your term papers.
6. You looked at beaches differently after seeing “Jaws.”
7. You were a member of the Columbia House Record and Tape Club.
8. You’ve flown on a four-engine propeller passenger plane.
9. You remember baseball before the designated hitter.
10. You know Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty.
11. You remember, as a kid, simply “going out to play.”
12. You once got all excited about the new frontiers of FM radio.
13. You held back tears during the premiere of “Brian’s Song.”
14. You know the difference between a flash cube and a flash bulb.
15. You know that “Have it your way” is not to be confused with As You Like It.
16. You huddled under your covers while reading “‘Salem’s Lot.”
17. You can finish from memory the song that starts with “Doe, a deer, a female deer…”
18. You know that Felix and Oscar were just apartment mates, though Felix might’ve given you pause.
19. You recall how “You’ve come a long way baby” was used to sell cigarettes to women, and you remember the tune!
20. You owned Silly Putty.
21. You understand the brilliance of “Tapestry” by Carole King.
22. You lobbied your mom to buy a new product called “Buitoni’s Instant Pizza.”
23. You’ve literally dialed a phone number.
24. You debated the merits of Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Betty Jo (“Lots of curves, you bet…”).
25. You know why CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News together don’t add up to one Walter Cronkite.
26. You know that Dr. J came before Air Jordan.
27. You associate “There’s got to be a morning after” with a sinking ship (not the Titanic).
28. You know which President was a peanut farmer.
29. You remember the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment.
30. You remember how the arrival of a Baskin Robbins ice cream store in your neighborhood was an event.
31. You first laughed at Flip Wilson’s jokes listening to an LP album.
32. You now get hives at the thought of “Seventies music.”
33. You now start twitching when you think about “Seventies television.”
34. You woke up early on Saturday mornings, in breathless anticipation of your favorite cartoon shows.
35. You recognize the names Hoss, Little Joe, and (wincing…) Hop Sing.
36. You had an ant farm or Sea Monkeys.
37. You know who used the Cone of Silence.
38. You got all excited about the Bicentennial.
39. You had a Bobby Sherman poster in your room.
40. You had that Farrah Fawcett poster in your room.
41. You remember when yogurt was considered kind of exotic.
42. You remember when acupuncture was considered extremely weird.
43. You watched the grainy live video of the first moon landing.
44. You once filled your car with leaded gasoline.
45. You know that “Fischer v. Spassky” was not a lawsuit.
46. You were just a tad too young to fully grasp all those protests during the 60s.
47. You debated the merits of Davy Jones vs. David Cassidy.
48. You’ve ingested Jiffy Pop, Space Food Sticks, and Tab.
49. You used mimeographed and ditto master handouts in grade school.
50. You watched an American President resign on national TV.
51. You’ll take Olivia Newton-John over any of today’s pop tarts.
52. You get all of the jokes in the movie “Airplane!”
53. You read Tiger Beat magazine.
54. You read Mad Magazine.
55. You made Creepy Crawlers and ate ’em.
56. Your first understanding of death came out of JFK’s funeral.
57. You remember Howard, Frank, and Dandy Don.
58. You know why Leno, Letterman, and Conan together don’t add up to one Johnny Carson.
59. You know that “Got to Be There” came before “Thriller.”
60. You read My Weekly Reader and Ranger Rick magazines in grade school.
61. You debated amnesty for draft resisters.
62. You know that Shirley Chisholm came before Hillary Clinton.
63. Your head automatically starts playing the music from “Charlie Brown Christmas” every holiday season.
64. You daydreamed of owning all the toys in the Sears Wish Book catalog.
65. You regard the theme song from “Hawaii Five-0” as one of the best of all time.
66. You sent away for stuff advertised in comic books.
67. You rank Ball Four as one of the greatest and funniest sports books ever.
68. You played lots of board games with friends and family.
69. You have (possibly vague) memories of cities rioting.
70. You rooted for Billie Jean King or Bobby Riggs (but not both!).
71. You thought that quotes from the TV show “Kung Fu” were so profound.
72. You wrote and received real handwritten letters from friends and family.
73. You skipped watching “That 70’s Show” because it was too been there, done that.
74. You can explain, even today, the sibling rivalry between Marcia and Jan.
75. You easily can add a half dozen of your own items to this list!
******
If you can say YES to more than half of the items on this list without using Google or Wikipedia, there’s a darn good chance that you’re a card-carrying American member of Generation Jones!
Please feel free to add your own in the comments!
(And for those wondering about any of these pop culture references, searches on either of those two online sources will fill in the details. I fully concede that this list favors those who watched too much television as kids!)
Gilligan’s Island image: Wikipedia
Fall is my most nostalgic season
Fall foliage, with Boston in the background (Photo: Wikipedia)
I’ve spent my whole life in places where the seasons change: Northwest Indiana, New York City, and now Boston. Of course I complain about the extremes of hot and cold weather, but if I’m being honest with myself, I admit to liking the change of seasons.
Spring is my favorite, but it never lasts long enough anywhere I’ve lived. Fall, however, has staying power, and for some reason it’s the season that most pushes my favorite childhood nostalgia buttons.
I think it has a lot to do with memories of going back to school as a grade schooler. My brother Jeff and I were fortunate to go to a good little neighborhood public grade school in Hammond, Indiana, staffed largely by old-fashioned teachers who really cared about the kids and drilled us on the basics. I don’t have to engage in a lot of revisionist history to say that it created some good memories.
Those memories connect to holidays and historical dates associated with the fall: Columbus Day, Halloween, and finally Thanksgiving, the bridge to winter. Of course, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving were drenched in the feel-good historical fictions contained in our easy reading history books. Halloween was a calorically magical and innocent observance, replete with neighborhood trick-or-treating where the only fears about knocking on strangers’ doors were over ghosts and goblins. And some of us imagined ourselves waiting with Linus for the Great Pumpkin to appear:
Tune in on October 31, 8 p,m. Eastern (Photo: abc.com)
Fall is a wonderful time of year in Boston. The weather is cool and comfortable, and the leaves turn colors in spectacular ways. The many historical sites from the American Revolution remind me of my childhood introduction to history, which quickly became one of my favorite subjects and remains so to this day. And not too far away is Salem, home to the real-life witch trials and some modern day tourist traps!
Today, of course, the seasons also correlate with what I do for a living. We have a fall semester and a spring semester, and I still use a personal, academic year calendar book where I write in my class schedule and various meetings by hand. Classes started this past week, and the weather has hit a classic fall-type cool patch. It’s a comforting combination for me.
Musings of a Gen Joneser 
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