Long gone are the days of trading paper notes in class without getting caught. Kids that text (all 100% of them) will never experience the thrill of receiving a paper note, the anticipation that surrounded getting one if you were expecting it from your girlfriend or boyfriend, the cooperation and assistance, plotting and planning it sometimes took to have your classmates pass you a note from your significant other without being caught, or feeling the sting of licks from your teacher’s wooden paddle if you got caught red-handed participating in passing notes in class.
When the paddle didn’t come out you typically had to sit out a one-hour recess and write something dumb like “I will never pass notes in the class again” until your fingertips turned numb from pressing the pen or pencil so hard. I once wore a blister on the inside of my right forefinger “writing lines” during recess and after school one day. Oh, the price of true love!!!
I used to marvel over the cool and interesting ways that girls could fold a paper note. Guys were never so clever. I can recall getting love notes that practically required a set of instructions on how to open them. I once tore one in two trying to get the thing open.
I was quite an interesting character during my middle and high school days. Enigma is the one word that quickly comes to mind. I was always fixated on striving for A’s and trying be beat my classmates on exams, but I never wanted to miss out on the classroom fun. Thus, although I was studious, I never missed an opportunity to pull a prank on a classmate, literally risking getting caught and punished on numerous occasions. Perhaps my biggest character flaw was that I would do anything for a laugh as long as it was legal and no one got seriously hurt. Funny, but I never associated breaking classroom rules set by my teacher as a matter or issue of legality.
Despite pulling pranks and jokes on my fellow classmates, I never thought of myself as a jerk or bully. Even better, I was never called one. Frankly, I lacked the height, weight and demeanor to be a bully. Practically everyone in school, boys and girls, could have whipped my butt in those days. I was truly the runt of the liter in my class, weighing only 115 pounds soaking wet when I graduated from high school. If anything, I was the guy most often being picked on by bullies, but we had very few bullies in our school. When I was being picked on my buddies Danny, Luther, Charles and Russell would always come to my rescue.
I will admit, however, that on more than one occasion I was the instigator of a bully threatening to whip my tail. It typically occurred shortly after he discovered I was the one that had pulled a joke or prank on him.
I can recall when you could buy pea shooters at the five and dime. We had two five and dime stores, Morgan & Lindsey and Ben Franklin. Both were located 9 miles away in the town of Leesville, the parish seat of Vernon Parish. I usually kept both of those stores sold out of pea shooters. Pea shooters became my weapon of choice for classroom warfare. You could hide the shooting straw in your three ring binder and load your mouth with several peas while the teacher was at the blackboard and had his or her back turned to the class. This generally allowed plenty of time to fire off a pea or two at unsuspecting classmates.
Five and Dimes disappeared from the landscape and fabric of Americana decades ago (replaced by Walmart) and pea shooters haven’t been sold for decades. If they exist at all they’ve probably been replaced by McDonald’s drink straws (which would have been hard to come by during the 50’s and 60’s in rural Louisiana.
Shooting rubber bands across the class was a barrel of fun. In the days of Rock ‘n’ Roll there was nothing funnier or more mischievous than hitting a guy on the back of an ear with a rubber band from close range. Paybacks were hell, and I received my fair share.
It’s hard to believe that something as low tech as a rubber band still exists today. I suppose kids still practice rubber band warfare. One would think that spit wads have also survived the times, but many schools no longer require paper notebooks or three-ring binders with paper. My youngest daughter went to a private school in Houston that required all students attend class with iPads. I think paper notebooks and paper tablets were practically non-existent throughout her four years of high school. Notice that I had to preface the words “notebooks” and “tablets” with the word “paper” just to emphasize I’m talking about the notebooks and tablets of yesterday.
Today’s kids never go outside, stayed camped inside playing video games and/or texting their friends. And that’s if we’re lucky. In today’s modern Internet world I think more bad things take place indoors than outdoors.
As I prepare to bring this post to an end I’m reminded how my mother and father thought my generation was the worst ever, predicting “your whole generation is doomed to hell” (if we didn’t change our ways). I would yell back, “I hope I never become old like you guys. You’re a bunch of old fogies!”
Now look who’s become the old fogie. 🙂
Footnote: One of the biggest arguments I ever got into with my father was over me changing my hairdo to look like Elvis Presley, combing it straight back. He refused to let me go to school until I parted it and combed it to the side, firmly stating, “If you keep wearing it back like that all your hair will fall out. You’ll be bald in no time!” I reached over, picked up a hand mirror, held it in front of his face and exclaimed, “Look at yourself, you comb your hair straight back!” Dad’s quick response, “Yeah, but I part my hair and then comb it back, there’s a difference.”
Yeah, right Dad!”