My recollection of school days began before the first day of school. As the hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer played out my thoughts of the first day of school would begin. Nectarines, apricots and dounut peaches were peaking their season. Our sunscreen mixture of baby oil and iodine was rounding the bottom of the bottle and the sand in the bottom of our beach bag was over ready to be emptied out. This part of the summer for me offered a peaceful feeling and an ideal moment to finish the best of my summer reads.

The first week of August often felt like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. Summer months are secretly shorter in an uncanny way. As we would watch Dr. Kildare, The Patty Duke Show and Columbo, during the month of August we would view commercials for school supplies, back to school outfits at Macy’s and the latest fluffer nutter cookie in school size packages. 

As the final days of summer approached and our ourlast barbecued hot dog, fresh corn  (one dollar an ear) and slice of blueberry pie with coffee Haagen- daz ice cream was devoured we would turn our thoughts to first day of school new outfit choice. 

If Indian summer hadn’t kicked in we could chosebetween a new Villager outfit which sported a circle pin and black patent leather shoes- or a new skirt with a madras blouse, alpaca sweater and cordovan penny loafer weejuns. New penny in place.

 Next pre-school activity would be to set up my blue loose leaf folders. I used colored tabs to divide social studies from algebra. Once the colorful, plastic pencil holders were filled we would clip it into the front of the loose leaf and give it a final click to close.

I was a good, but “could be better student if I applied myself.” My focus was more on writing funny compositions and being popular than understanding how to do a parallelogram or how to conjugate the pluperfect case in any language. 

I graduated High school in1969 when our sources of reference were the World Book Encyclopedia, the Merriam Webster Dictionary and The Thesaurus. 

With no thought to use computers, penmanship was something we got graded for.

 In the absence of Google, Siri, iPads, Kindles, Facebook, Instagram, and a myriad of other search engines, we recall licking our fingers to turn the pages of The Red Badge of Courage. I actually still love a hard cover over a battery operated read. 

One hobby that came out of my “school days” was collecting bookmarks.

One year when we drove to Florida and stopped at South of the Border in South Carolina. I got my first book mark. It was plastic and had a picture of a sombrero. I added two more one from Williamsburg Virginia with a picture of our founding fathers. My third came from a school trip to Old Museum Village in Monroe, New York. That one I clipped to the top of the page of one of my Nancy Drew adventures. On a random rainy day when I felt  I’d lost my place in my book, I would look through my collections. 

Flipping pages to see what happened next, albeit antiquated is still my choice of read. In the absence of loosing battery, with no clicks or beeps and nothing to plug in to find out if the protagonist gets pulled over on the road for texting, is my slow down, regroup time. Metaphorically with the rapid pace of the progression of time, on the days that felt endless with emotional clutter, I’d put on my “Red Badge of Courage” tap into Astrid Lindgren’s character, Pippi Long-stocking and etch a sketch my way to Neverland.

In Louis Armstrong’s “ Wonderful World” when he heard babies cry and watched them grow he knew they’d learn more than he’d ever know and he said to himself “what a wonderful world.” So here’s to the wonderful world memories of school day’s before unplugging, rebooting, memes, twittering, emoticons or cyber bullying. 

As the dots come dancing in response to a text, sometimes hours later, with no audible voice, no inflections and a smiley face replacing a giggle, I pray for the millennial’s and our grandchildren a collection of bookmarks where they can find their place even if their battery wears out. Good Old Golden Rule Days.