The terazzo floors at the school where I attended first grade mesmerized me as I walked down the hall. If I got to class early enough, I had permission to follow the floor’s magenta marble flecks to the school bookstore. It was a strange name for the school-supply shop that was packed neatly into a closet by the principal’s office. I was there to look; my right pocket held one nickel for milk. Jars of pencils, stacks of crisp notebooks, and trays of colorful erasers held my rapt attention. “What do you want, dear?” the elderly school secretary, Mrs. Lawrence, would ask. In three months, I’d never bought a thing. Behind her, amber oak cubbies held stacks of construction paper awaiting adornment. “I’d like one of those eraser caps, and two airplane pencils, please.” It was Tim from my classroom. His mom packed Hohos and Suzy Qs in his lunchbox. He had the waistline to prove it, but I didn’t connect the two then. In class I’d watch his novelty eraser from the bookstore waltz in the air as he wrote T-I-M in the top right corner of his worksheets. It added weight to his pencil, yet made it lighter, so it seemed. Underneath, the pencil’s original eraser was pristine, no misspelled word buffeted by the sharp edge of the ferrule.
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Postscript: January 2011:
A kind reader sent me this photo.The erasers were purchased at my elementary school’s bookstore during the years I was a student, and have been lovingly stored during the many intervening years.
I love the tiny vignettes of by now ancient memories that have survived the decades since my grammar school days. Certainly eraser items would be included in the “school store” memory. ‘not really sure why the school store always was so alluring – it absolutely had NOTHING that the local 5 and dime store did not have. Maybe it was just because the idea of a “store” in a school seemed exotic, somehow. In addition, I believe that visiting that store made me feel like I was really a big, INDEPENDENT kid – going there on my own – making my OWN selection (of an eraser), handling the business transaction all by myself and then striding out of the store — to dissolve, once more, into the ebb and flow of the regular school day.
Believe it or not, I still have one novelty eraser from grade school: A cartoon-ish blue cat. Knowing me, I probably used my milk money to buy it (yeah, I know). What WAS it about school supplies during those days? They were so… FASCINATING and EXCITING!!!