Miss Crabtree Would Have Frowned
A few nephews and friends have just gone back to school. The former have gone back to grade school, and the latter are back in grad school. It seems the younger you are, the more stuff you have to buy for school, rather than increasing with age like it used to seem.
Back in the day, kids showed up at school without apparently having any parents or legal guardians coaxing them to do so. They sort of just lived in a year round clubhouse and were self sufficient, somehow also getting food and clothing themselves too. Miss Crabtree (not to be confused with Miss Crabtree from South Park) was one of the few adults I ever remember in the “Our Gang” episodes. She made school seem pretty easy. All you had to do, it seemed, was just show up with an apple and maybe recite a poem. Since there were a minimal amount of episodes that alluded to the fact that school even existed, her school year must have lasted about two weeks. Maybe since the school only seemed to have seven kids in it, it closed.
Nowadays, school isn’t a “come as you are” affair. Kids need more file folders than a small law office. Back in my day, the Trapper Keeper was the main means to keep oneself straightened out.
Because kids were having back problems from their bookbags, my friend’s daughter has a set of books at school and set of books at home. It is not a set up where they have a stack of books and the students each grab one during class. Those are assigned too. I suppose kids are less likely to abuse them if they are responsible for them.
My nephew is always late for school because he can never find anything to wear that won’t revolt my sister-in-law. He is not a rebellious kid, who tries to push the envelope. He is the type of kid who will grab what is there, even if it is off the floor and even if it totally clashes and makes him look like a tornado hit him. The other possibility is he will wear the same shirt for a week. It will be cleaned every time, as he managed to hit the washloads just right but kids are starting talk about that.
I bought him a label maker and taught him a trick from my days of storing costumes for the theater. Label each hanger with what is supposed to go with what. There were some ties from the 60s that I had that actually had a label that told you what color of suit it should go with.
In a matter of half an hour, we had everything hung up. He isn’t allowed to wear concert Tshirts in school, so we labelled them “after school.” We labelled striped shirts “Striped shirt. Goes with Jeans or Tan khakis.” You get the idea. I think I have created a monster because now he is using iron on labels in his gym shirt after I showed him a bunch of tips on the Dymo Labelmaker Site.
I don’t know if it is something that will last until Christmas break, but maybe now that he is not the suspected “smelly kid” in school he’ll get out of the house more.
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