School wasn’t easy for Generation X students.
Granted, we didn’t have to walk 10 miles through snow (each way!) to get there every day as our parents did, but we endured comparable struggles all our own.
While our kids breeze through the educational system with every modern convenience, we were forced to be stronger and more resilient to succeed. Largely left to our own devices to bear burdens that no student today will ever have to face.
Writing on brown cursive paper.
The fat pencil markings would be so faint that they were hardly readable, and the pencil would shoot out halfway across the page if you hit a grain. But hey – the Troll pencil toppers were kinda cute.
Using wall-mounted pencil sharpeners.
Having to parade to the front of the class and stand in line for the sharpener that mangled your pencil. Knowing that everyone could see your butt jiggling while you sharpened.
Carrying plastic lunchboxes.
They had cartoon characters on them and zero insulation, unlike the fancy BPA-free bento ice-pack creations kids carry today. The thermos always leaked and would squish your sandwich.
Getting smacked in the face with a tether ball.
And having to suck it up so you could make a comeback before your opponent won it all.
Making textbook covers out of brown paper bags.
Mom, can you save ten grocery bags for me? Then spending an evening selecting the ones that weren’t wet or stained to cut and fold into covers for textbooks – that were already written in anyway.
Making textbook covers out of brown paper bags was just one way Gen X had it tough. #midlife Share on XPlaying dodge ball.
Potential injuries be damned! Mastering a game that required you to hurl a red rubber ball at someone as hard as you could. While praying that nobody pegged you.
Having a kid with a gross wet thumb touch yours.
Then wiping it on your Jordache jeans as you played Heads Up 7-Up in class on a rainy day.
Using a card catalog.
Spending hours in the school library searching for the required ten books for your assigned essay’s bibliography. Silently cursing your fellow students when cards were missing from the catalog or books were misplaced on the shelves.
Always dying of dysentery in Oregon Trail.
Or having to write a tombstone epitaph for a family member who died of typhoid before you.
Being forced to stand in the corner as a disciplinary measure.
Public humiliation at its finest. You could be stuck in the corner five minutes or twenty, depending on your teacher. Attempts to turn around would be penalized with additional time added to your sentence.
Finding the right Trapper Keeper.
You’d search forever to find one that everyone else would ogle, only to see that the girl next to you in Social Studies had purchased the same.
Always getting a shack in M.A.S.H.
And secretly envying your friends who always got Mansions.
Being picked last for a team in gym class.
And facing the shame of standing by yourself as the kids on your defaulting team groaned and rolled their eyes, already bemoaning their upcoming loss due to YOU.
Having a teacher intercept one of your passed notes.
And hanging your head in humiliation as she unfolds the origami shape and reads aloud to the class. Cheeks burning as she relays your crush’s answer to the age-old question: Do you like me? Check YES or NO.
Transcribing lectures the old-fashioned way.
Taking frenzied notes by hand while shaking out wrist cramps and hoping you don’t run out of paper. It didn’t really matter because you couldn’t read your chicken scratch later anyway.
Squinting to read your teacher’s chalkboard scribbles.
And cringing anytime her piece of chalk made that awful screech. Or when that kid would purposely drag his fingernails across the board.
Trying to decipher notes on the overhead projector.
Your teacher’s handwriting would either be too small or too messy to read. Or he would lay his hand over what he had just written, smudging the ink.
Bearing the weight of 3,000 textbooks in your backpack.
And constantly trying to heal the permanent kinks in your back and neck. Even worse, having your JanSport backpack rip from the load only two weeks into the school year.
Praying that your sweaty feet don’t stink.
And taking off your purple jelly shoes discreetly in the corner of the locker room, just in case.
Hoping that your Hypercolor t-shirt still works after a washing.
And then letting everyone at school touch it so they can watch the hand prints appear and then fade.
Not getting the perfect jean peg or t-shirt sleeve roll.
And having to readjust your jeans and t-shirt sleeves throughout the school day as they keep coming undone, ruining your fashion statement.
Your friend not returning the Tiger Beat you loaned out during reading time.
The one with your future husband Corey Haim on the cover. Because it contained a 6-page feature on her future husband, Joey McIntyre of NKOTB.
Running out of Aqua Net on a school morning.
And having to dip into your brother’s Dep gel as a last minute attempt to adequately heighten and stiffen your curled bangs.
Not being able to find the L encyclopedia in your home collection.
The night before your report on Abraham Lincoln is due. And the sinking feeling you get when your mom confirms that she didn’t go to the grocery store the week they were selling L.
Getting “kidnapped” on your birthday.
Being awoken by friends who had arranged with your parents to show up during the wee hours of the morning – to dress you in outrageous PJs, muss up your hair, and take you to breakfast. You’d then head to school and walk around all day looking like a transient.
Being unable to perfectly align the holes on your dot matrix printer.
And then having to tear off the sides without ripping the paper itself. Hey – it was still better than having to use your old typewriter and Wite-Out.
Trying to decode messages on your pager.
Usually it would just be 14 (HI) or 07734 (HELLO), but occasionally you would receive a 911 and then have to figure out a way to get to a payphone between classes.
We Gen X students overcame nearly insurmountable obstacles to complete our education. Our kids are soft in comparison – what with their cell phones and tablets and world-at-their-fingertips technology.
But it wasn’t all bad. Today’s kids will never have the opportunity to race home and intercept report cards before their parents. Or buy Cokes from the cafeteria vending machines. Or even walk to school without chaperones.
And for that, I’d take our era any day. Immobile bangs, pegged jeans, and all.
A trip down memory lane…it really is a miracle that we survived all those near insurmountable obstacles, especially the chalk screeching on the blackboard. Not altogether sure I care to be reminded, having succeeded in forgetting all about it till now! But like you said, there were good times too…
LOL, yes! How did we do it back then??
I’m a child of the 70s in The UK – I can relate to the covering of exercise books (we used leftover wallpaper & being the 70s it was often floral or in your face) ; our pencil sharpeners were screwed at the end of the teacher’s desk, but the same embarrassment occured!; We used as reference the full 26 volume Encyclopaedia Britannica; the blackboard (!) ; no calculators in maths – we learnt mental arithmetic quickly, especially subtraction, by playing darts; we had to do cross country running as a PE lessons … Hackney marshes is no fun in the pouring rain …..ahhh sweet memories, thanks for that! 😊
Ah, memories! Finding new and interesting things to cover textbooks with was always fun…wrapping paper, wallpaper samples, sticky backed plastic as a treat. Do kids at school now really not know this joy?!
Ah yes, the wrapping paper! We’d decorate our books in themed wrapping paper for all the major holidays.
I think a lot of these are cultural references because I’m Australian and don’t understand some of them, whereas others brought immediate memories – especially the fear of being picked last in sport and teachers writing with felt tipped pens on the overhead projector. 🙂 Leanne @ cresting the hill
Oh, interesting! So yes – a lot of it must be cultural. Glad to hear that the overhead projector and concern about being picked last for a team are universal though!
Trying to find a book in the library!
Yes Yes Yes! And it was always misplaced and not where it should be!
Hahaha. We are STILL using the dot matrix printer paper handed down to us from my mother as as our drawing paper. My trapper keeper had kittens on it but was missing an inspirational message. You nailed my childhood. Plus the card catalogues? Organized by the Dewey decimal system. Now THAT was a waste of time.
Ah yes, the Dewey decimal system. So great in theory, yet so flawed in practice!
Memories! All of that plus walking long distance to school. Kids today are definitely missing out! 🙂
I don’t know even one kid nowadays who walks to school! Everyone is being driven around, while we would walk as long as it took to get home or to practice or wherever.
Believe it or not I see a lot of kids walking here in Chicago. Even one suburb that I used to drive through on my way to work. I guess in Illinois it’s still going on! 🙂
That’s great!! I wish I saw more of that here.
Some of these were true about Boomers–many of them! Had things not progressed at all? Who knew?
LOL – Apparently not!
This is AWESOME! Talk about going down memory lane. The pencil sharpener walk of shame line and Trapper Keeper reference #ILOVETHE80S
Right? You could immediately deduce a person’s social status by the Trapper Keeper they carried.
Ah hypercolour t shirts! Yes, there was always leaking, squishing & a distinctive taste with old style lunchboxes. & overhead projectors really were a nightmare.
I really have no clue why hypercolor shirts were popular… Yet I had one and was proud of it!
This is sooooo funny! How did we survive???? I totally remember the first night’s hw was to cover our textbooks!!!
Right? And then try to make the cover as unique as possible (when you’re dealing with a brown paper bag)!
Yes! The pencil sharpener! The text books! All of it!
It’s a miracle we survived!
They still have those pencil sharpeners! Oh…and how many times did I die along the Oregon trail…
Oregon Trail was the best – our generation’s version of Grand Theft Auto!
Yes to the paper bag book covers!!! Can you even get paper bags anymore!
Good question!!
Oh, wow!! All of these things made me feel old! How did we ever manage getting through school using the card catalog, when our kids spend nanoseconds on Google to instantly find their answers?
Right? Imagine how much easier school would have been with the internet!
What a great trip down memory lane! I started Kindergarten in ’93, but a lot of these still applied to me! What fun!
I really loved growing up in the 80s!
This is hilarious because I just finished writing about the perils of the 80s, and how we had it rough dialing for days on our rotary phones. Remember when we actually had to crack a book before google gave us our answers? Ha ha
Ah yes the rotary phone! And fighting over who gets to use it!
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