I Remember the Days of the Old Schoolyard

I think we're almost to tax-free back-to-school sales week here in Connecticut. I'm a bit hazy on what's exempt in terms of clothes and shoes and how much of it is without sales tax (hint: certainly NOT all) mainly because our two kids are grown and gone but speaking from what's left of my memory, we used to very much plan on this week to stretch the budget.

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey having new 'back to school' clothes was kind of the bribe to get you to go, though I was pretty good at going to school (not so much in life but that's a tale for another time) and didn't need a lot of persuading. 

We were a large family and so I assume now (never crossed my mind at the time) that new clothes, shoes, and coats et al for multiple children cost a bundle which helped explain why Mom went slightly crazy when you came home with a hole at the knee in your pants or a scuff on your shoes and you had to wait until Dad came home to 'explain what happened.' 

My brothers and sisters and I all went at various times to Catholic schools, some of us just for the elementary grades others through high school so there were a lot of white dress shirts, school ties, and, for the girls, black and white saddle shoes and some of the most bizarre plaid jumpers and skirts in the history of what not to wear.

Mom used the brown grocery bags we had from shopping at the A&P (we rarely went to Acme) as book covers after we brought our textbooks home on the first day of school and we brown-bagged lunches she made the night before and bought a carton of milk for a dime in the cafeteria every day. 

We could go out and play after we came home on the school bus but had to be in long before dinner (not supper) to do our homework before Dad came home on the train from New York where he went every day before we got up for school. 

If we needed help on homework that Mom couldn't provide, a rarity, we asked Dad after dinner (that's how I found out he was a teacher) and one of the things you learned was to never ask him to explain whatever you didn't understand more than once. 

And we, or at least I, thought we had a hard life and I suspect all of us who then ourselves had children (and that would be all of us) tried to make it easier for our own kids who, probably like us, think they had it so hard as well. The Great Mandela of Life I suppose. 

I'm wistful reminiscing about all of that after I read this story. We helped make a world where this is normal and we seem unable or unwilling to reverse course. Shame on all of us.
-bill kenny