Breaking something in…Literally
Think about when you were in elementary school, junior high school, or high school. What piece of equipment did you have to purchase each year to be prepared for school? Did it last the whole year or have to be replaced before the school year ended?
With me, it started out as briefcases. I don’t know why I felt the need to carry one. Maybe it made me look more professional as I took the bus to school. Maybe it was because I saw other students carry them. Either way I needed to have a case, with snaps on the front and a handle to carry it by. But I wasn’t a professional businessman and I wasn’t the one that paid for the said briefcase. I was 10 years old. And how does a 10-year-old
treat their brand new briefcase? Certainly not like an adult. One of the problems with the briefcase was that it was hard and rigid. If my books didn’t fit well into my briefcase, well, I made sure that they did, even if I had to sit on the case to make sure it would clasp shut. In most cases watching the sides, top, and bottom bulge more than the builders created them for.
I was also not kind to my book carrier in other ways. I would throw it down when I came home and forcibly open the lid more than it was meant to be opened. It didn’t take long before my briefcase no longer functioned and needed to be replaced. At least the contents of my briefcase, because of its rigid structure, usually remained unharmed and usable.
As junior high school beckoned and I could no longer take a bus to school, I realized that walking the mile to school carrying a briefcase was not going to cut it. Most of the other students in my school were now carrying book bags. But that was still going to 
be too unwieldy for me. Being the maverick that I have always been throughout my life, I decided to use something totally different. I got myself a knapsack. It was much easier to carry on my back and was flexible enough to carry lots of irregularly shaped objects. Little did I know how much ahead of my time I was. I had created what was to be the precursor to the backpack, which now is the norm for students carrying books to school. It was also easier to carry my trumpet on band days or my lunch since my hands were free with everything else on my back. And the best thing was that my knapsack lasted for more than one year.
Of course, being in junior high school and continuing through high school, I needed a lot more individual sheets of paper and a way to organize that paper and keep my notes and writing in good shape. It was time for me to be introduced to another mandated school piece of equipment, the looseleaf notebook. You all remember those 3-ring binders or 2-ring binders (for the life of me, I have no idea why they created
both kinds) with the metal rings of death and their perfectly aligned teeth, that if you were not careful would make quite an impression on a finger or two; some of which I remember having to deal with. But what I remember most was the fact that no matter how carefully I kept my looseleaf notebooks inevitably those three rings of perfect alignment managed to get misaligned and since I treated my looseleaf notebooks the same way I had treated my aforementioned briefcases, the covers which were just cardboard covered in fabric, never managed to stay intact and usually had to be replaced multiple times during the year, meaning I needed to purchase a new looseleaf notebook. Add to that the number of pagesaver reinforcements that I had to get to fix the holes in the paper that constantly tore so that I wouldn’t lose any important documents that were supposed to stay in my looseleaf.
To this day, I still cannot use looseleaf binders, as they are called now, without overfilling them, misaligning the clasps, and inevitably having to use reinforcements to repair the holes in the papers that were torn due to my mishandling. At least the reinforcements nowadays are self-sticking and don’t have to be licked to use.
As high school loomed, it was a much longer walk to school. Occasionally I took city buses. Book bags were the norm for all students, though I managed to keep my knapsack. It was more functional. I still had some looseleaf issues, but luckily some of my teachers required spiral notebooks. This was good because if you got the right spiral notebook, it would have the same number of holes in it that the paper did for your looseleaf notebook. There was much less tearing of holes when you use a spiral notebook. And because the number of holes matched your looseleaf, spiral notebooks fit into your looseleaf notebook.
However with spi
ral notebooks, if you were like me and liked to pull on the metal spirals, they too became bent out of shape and also got caught on my clothing and other items that a pointy wire is like to do so that not only notebooks had to be replaced. And I still had problems with 3-holed papers that weren’t from my spiral notebooks, reinforcing the ripped holes and dealing with the messed up ring clamping system that never clamped completely shut, which probably caused a lot of the ripped holes.
High school also required more books for me to carry, making the weight of the knapsack that much harder to deal with. I purchased a smaller book bag for lunches and gym clothes. It was easier with the small book bag, being much lighter than the knapsack, to carry by hand and I also wasn’t playing an instrument anymore.
What would a school year be like without having to buy some new piece of equipment you needed for school, that inevitably would be misused and break? This is a rite of passage, in my humble opinion.
The late, Gilda Radnor, a famous comedian, said numerous times, “It’s always something.” I’m curious to see in this age of backpacks, Chromebooks, smartphones, and other electronic devices that proliferate our school culture, what are those somethings that “It ‘s always…” that have taken the place of my briefcases and notebooks? After all, without new stuff to break each year, why even bother going to school.
