School daze revisited

For some reason, I held on to a lot of my school exercise books. I kept them in a cardboard box in my parents' attic for many years, and more recently brought them to my own home. Now they've been sitting around taking up space, and I don't really see what the point is. I certainly don't look at them and I don't expect anyone else to.

So, I'm getting rid of them - or most of them. Cardboard covers to the green bin, staples to the black bin, contents to the black box. This is complicated by various glued-in and taped-in parts.

As I disassemble the books, I can't help noticing some things. I'm reminded of the phrase "lies to children". I'm reminded that religious studies often means the uncritical teaching of Christian myth. I notice the drawings and scribblings in the backs of books, and my very repetitive attempts at humour. I wonder what I could have done with those hundreds of hours in secondary school that I wasted on such things. I'm reminded that I developed the most awful, stilted, writing style in middle school, and couldn't write a story to save my life. Not that I'm that much better today.

I also found a sample of Epsom salts taped into a Chemistry book. Why?

I think I'll keep some of the first school stuff though... and there are a few later pages worth keeping to post later.