Wowzers!!! You all know how to ask AND answer a question! I really enjoyed reading your comments! When I get back home I’ll have to show the wig brush, but I’m guessing most of you know what it looks like.
If you missed Laura’s comment at the end yesterday she had some GREAT links to some of the things touched on… I was going to post a link about the different doll molds, but I like the one Laura posted better.
Okay…here is the post I had scheduled for Friday…
I’m heading home today and hope you’ve all enjoyed visiting with each other. I could have just said I was going to be gone and not written anything, but I thought you’d have fun amongst yourselves… :o)
I thought I’d ask the question for today… Who has a great Back to School story? Maybe it was in grade school, or maybe it was even in college… let’s see today what you all have to share.
I’ll be back sewing and getting my kitchen painted soon… hope you’ll wait for me… :o)
Blessings, Jeanne
Looks like I’m first again tonight! I was probably the last to respond to yesterday’s post, having just done done so tonight, but I was first on the Wed. (Tues. night for me) post!
Strictly speaking, this isn’t Back to school, but…in a way it sort of is.
It was October 1960, and we had just moved to Seattle from Upper Michigan; I was very homesick. I needed a new sweater for school, so we all went to the Bon Marche’ (I think), a big department store in downtown Seattle. We found my black sweater, and then I was looking (maybe mom was getting something for my brother, I don’t know), and I picked up a pleated wool plaid skirt and a white blouse, and told my dad they would go nicely with my new sweater. He had me try them on and then said, well, let’s get them! I was surprised, as he wasn’t normally a person to just buy things on a whim like that. Perhaps he realized a new outfit would help me feel better about going to a new school, not knowing any one there, etc.
Whatever the case, I got the outfit, and wore it often, probably thru high school! In later years, I wore the skirt again (maybe 20 years ago)!! (the blouse had paint stains on it and the sweater was looking Very shabby by then!) I still have all three pieces, although I don’t know why I kept them so long. I guess because it represented a happy moment in a year that was very trying and sad for me. (I still miss Michigan.)
What a wonderful story Charlotte!
The only thing I can remember about any of my first days of school was starting kindergarten. We had one kindergarten room in my school that was shared by two classes. The morning group and the afternoon. Being in the afternoon group, which consisted of the older children, I didn’t start school until after lunch around 1:00 I guess. That fateful first day, my mother walked me through throngs of children playing outside during the noon recess to the kindergarten door. After a greeting by the teacher, I was directed to sit on one of the chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. I presume my mother must have left, but I don’t think I even looked for her. Already there sitting on one of the chairs was a girl with short blond hair. She seemed kind of glad to see another student. We started talking, and I found out her name was Marsha. Gradually, others arrived as we sat on those old, even then, oak kindergarten chairs. So began my first of many years in school. Whenever I run into Marsha at reunions, we always mention our first meeting. And to add to the story, years later, my mother was working at the same neighborhood school but then as a teacher herself, teaching adults how to type and get their first jobs. She said that they were getting rid of all of the very old furniture left stored in the kindergarten room as it was to become an adult classroom. She brought home two of those now very old and well used oak kindergarten chairs. They now reside in my family room. 🙂
What a lovely keepsake for you, Joy, and a happy memory, too!
I met my best friend when we moved to Michigan in 1952. I was in first grade. June and I are still best friends–and we have so many things in common as to be almost unbelievable! Even our married last names–they are one letter different!
I loved your stories about school, Charlotte and Joy! Unfortunately, I cannot remember a single “big” thing about any first days of school, but then again, that was a loooong time ago! I do remember getting new clothes, shoes, and pencil boxes at the beginning of every year, and rearranging my pencils, crayons, etc., in them. I also remember getting what we called “dog collars” to wear around our bobby socks. They came in all different colors, and the number of them you wore at once said if you were “available, taken, going steady, engaged, or —-gulp—-married!! I was all of 7 or 8 when I got mine, and just had one, thank heavens!! How silly was that! 🙂
I have gone through so many first days of school of my own, my children’s and now my grandchildren. It was kind of semi-sweet for me the year I stopped teaching, and the next first day of school rolled around. I kind of wanted to be there, but had a little baby girl who needed me more, so that was the end of wanting to go back!
I’ll tell my back to school story. I was 21 and going off to Bible College in Springfield Missouri. It was my first time being away from home and I was plenty nervous. I had planned out what I was going to wear that first morning down to every little detail…
The problem was… I forgot to set my alarm clock!!! I woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to be at Chapel…the first thing every morning. I was scrambling around trying to get dressed and make myself look presentable. I arrived just in time but I was a wreck and all sweaty…not exactly as I had planned!!!
Thanks everyone!!! I just got home about an hour ago and it really is true…there’s no place like home! I think I’ve said that before!
Blessings, Jeanne
Boy, I remember my first day at junior high school….! I had been going to a *small* country school… had 16 kids in my 6th grade class…but, in Junior High, you had to go by bus to the ‘big city’! (Lansing MI) I wouldn’t know’anyone’, was sure I would get LOST trying to find classes, etc…. I was a nervous wreck. On the way to the car to drive to the bus stop 3/4 mile down the road, I twisted my ankle (my subconscious knew I really didn’t wanna go, I guess!). I hobbled to school… found my home room and took a seat. The girls in front of me, turned around and asked me if her hair looked nappy? I hadn’t ever talked to a black girl before, and hadn’t a clue what ‘nappy’ meant! What should I SAY? gasp! I didn’t want to offend her…so, I said “It looks ok to ‘me’…” (Maybe she was as nervous as *I* to be there? Didn’t think about that at the time…) Anyway – I survived. Didn’t get lost, and even managed to find my way back to the right bus to get back home!
As far as school goes, I don’t remember anything real exciting but I always loved the way our elementary school looked so polished, especially the wooden floors in the older part of the school. There was always that wonderful scent of paper and pencils in the air. It was fun to be back in school.
Yet, for me as a mother, the start of school made me so sad with the children heading back. I missed them so much. We always had wonderful summers and up until their last days of their school years, I never liked seeing them go back to school. (yes, school was important) My youngest continued going to school for many years and I still felt that pang of sadness every time he would leave.
I enjoyed hearing all of the stories of heading back to school. Life can be so interesting. Good question to ask!
I liked the smell of the papers run on the ditto machine.
I don’t have many specific memories of beginning of school, but my kindergarten classroom was located in the “basement” (actually a few steps down from the main school first floor) in the center of the school. I do remember our kind neighbor who bought me a plaid satchel to use for school. It was more of an item a student going to Catholic school would use in our neighborhood. I was going to a Christian school, but not Catholic. I don’t think I used it for school but remember thinking it was such a sweet thing of her to do for me.
I had my grandkids yesterday so I missed out on the conversation. Is there a way to get back to old conversations so I can catch up? I couldn’t figure that out.
But I have a great back-to-school story to share. It was in the early 1950s and we were bussed to schools from suburbia because we had no schools out our way. We were put into schools that had room for us and into classrooms per our bus numbers which were based on what developments we lived in. When I was in third grade, my first year at this particular school, I heard about this wonderful teacher named Mrs. Dietz. She taught fourth grade. While I was in third grade I heard nothing but good things about Mrs. Dietz and she sounded like a teacher I would love to have. So the first day of fourth grade I marched into her class as if I belonged there. Unfortunately my name was not on her class roster. I was told I would need to leave and find my correct class. I burst out crying. Fortunately my mother was at school that day getting my sister settled into first grade. I went running to her. She brought me back to the class and with the cooperation of my mother, Mrs. Dietz, and an understanding school official, my name was put on the class roster and I remained in her class. Best year of elementary I ever had, and the only class picture I have. It is very precious to me.
Wow, you brought back a horror memory! First day of college, the day before I had scratched my eye and was wearing a gauze covering which was bad enough but it gets worse…I was wearing a cute dress that I had sewn and since it was 1972, it was short. I’m sure I wore panty hose in Texas (HOT). I was coming out of the science building and since I am so graceful, down the stairs I went and my dress flipped up, tore my hose, and skinned my knees. Luckily I knew no one so once the patch came off my eye and I never wore that dress again, no one recognized me and pointed fingers.
On a strange note, my dad is Air Force and we moved around a lot and we lived in Woodbridge, VA freshman year of high school. Two moves later, I stayed in Texas while the rest of the family moved to Boston, MA. I was living in the dorm and went in the lobby and there was one of my best friends from Virginia who was attending the same little (4000 students) Midwestern University in Wichita Falls. Talk about a small world! We had some interesting dorm rules of curfews, signing out, clean room checks, grounding, and boys could only visit rooms on every other Sunday afternoons. Three years later it was a coed dorm. Of course there was supposed to be no wandering between floors, but…of course their was always streaking across campus (not me), boys with telescopes in the dorm next door to us trying to see I our rooms. Good times!
I went to Western Wash. State College (now University) my last two years, and lived in the dorm; we, too, had similar rules–signing in/out if gone overnight or for the weekend, grounding (we called it being campused, I think), curfews, etc. However, I graduated in 1968, and boys were not allowed ANYwhere except the big “living room” downstairs! There were panty raids occasionally, though (two that I remember during the two years I lived in Higginson Hall)–one time a couple of boys made it almost to the second floor!! Fun times.
Okay I found out how to reach some of the more recent posts, but I was wondering does anyone check back to read any new responses? I missed yesterday’s and I sure have a lot to say on getting my girls back to school. I’m just finishing up a summer with my grandkids two days a week, managing farm income when I’m out-of-state and embroidering t-shirts for the grandkids – and me, among other things. Then, as soon as the grandkids go back to school, I will be leaving on vacation. So I haven’t done any back-to-school sewing for the girls and I’m sure to hear about it. So I’ve been going over what they have and deciding what to put them in before I leave on vacation. Lots of dress clothes, not much in the way of school clothes. Got to remedy that when I get back.
I sometimes check back on posts, Barbara, especially when it’s something where there’s a lot of back-and-forth chatter, like the last few!
Okay so I figured out how to access recent posts, but I was wondering if anyone ever checks back to read any new comments? I missed yesterday’s and I sure would have had a lot to say about the subject of back-to-school. After spending the summer keeping my two grandkids two days a week, managing our farm income when I’m out of state, embroidering t-shirts for the grandkids – and me, among other things, I have not had the chance to do any back-to-school sewing for my girls and I’m sure to hear about it. As soon as the grandkids return to school, I will be leaving on vacation and will have no time for back-to-school sewing until after school starts. So I’ve been going through their clothes trying to decide what to put on them before I leave on vacation. Lot’s of pretty dressy things but not much in the way of back-to-school. Need to remedy that when I get back.