<\/p>\n
GEEZ, this bag is heavy! What the hell is in this thing?<\/span><\/p>\n BOOKS, as it turned out. School<\/em> books.<\/span><\/p>\n Whose? (mine)<\/span><\/p>\n From when? (the first two years of high school)<\/span><\/p>\n WHY? (good question)<\/span><\/p>\n Condition? (VERY used)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before we start, I just found some related material elsewhere in another old, falling apart scrapbook:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how it works now, but back then, if you attended a Catholic grammar school, it was considered a VERY BIG DEAL to get into some of these schools\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026so much so, that you had to take a test and could only list 3 schools. If you didn\u2019t do well on the test, you would probably wind up going to public high school (which might not have been a bad choice).<\/span><\/p>\n I got into all 3 schools I applied for. Sadly, I didn\u2019t choose the nearby (next town) co-ed<\/u> one (BIG mistake!) and went for the all-boys name one 3 or 4 towns away:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back to the bag-o-books:<\/span><\/p>\n There was some light stuff sitting on the top of the bag, so as to not get crushed by the books – something to do with peanut butter, presidents and noses.<\/span><\/p>\n Right on top was a partial piece of paper advertising products from Planters: peanut butter, oil, and candy (5 cents for a \u201cJumbo Block\u201d);<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the back, you could get yourself an \u201chistorical and educational paint book\u201d from Mr. Peanut if you sent him lots of empty peanut bags, candy wrappers or other refuse. Got peanut allergies? Tough – you lose out:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Something looks very familiar about that paint book, but I don\u2019t think I ever had a paint book from anywhere in my life (watch one show up in the next bag):<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Under that was a slightly-yellowed and oversized plastic bisection of a human nose with a door on it that says \u201cOPEN\u201d. Who wouldn\u2019t want to open a door to the inside of a nose?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Did you know that besides having an interior door, your nose has different parts with black numbers on them? Me either:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are a couple of other black numbers visible when you flip it over:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I also have this loose piece that seems to fit over the right part of the previous image at an angle:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s as far as I got – knowledge-wise – until I dug further into the bag and found this cardboard with a piece of paper attached to it:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Good lord! It\u2019s my freshman year, Bergen Catholic High School Science Fair project with the answers to all those number questions!<\/span><\/p>\n (\u201c1-E\u201d was my class\u2019s designation)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This item tells me that I probably had a choice of which sense to focus on for the project:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I could have bought one that was fully assembled AND painted for 5 bucks? I\u2019m sure that wasn\u2019t allowed, but I didn\u2019t even bother to attempt<\/em> painting this one (though I DID have the instructions):<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder what kind of grade I merited for this slap-together job.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On to the books!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n HISTORY (Part 1)<\/span><\/p>\n The one on the left looks as old as the contents:<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019ll be one more history book later.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n LANGUAGES!<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, I took Latin. Two years of it were required\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..I took three (I liked it):<\/span><\/p>\n The problem was that two years of another language were also required. I took Spanish for three years. After a while, you start mixing them up. I remember one test where I had to write the Spanish word for \u201cboy\u201d. Simple enough, right? I wrote \u201cpuer\u201d – Latin for \u201cboy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n I still remember a lot of the Spanish words I learned back then and Latin was always interesting to me because so many of our English words are derived from it.<\/span><\/p>\n Useless information: the Latin word for \u201casparagus\u201d is \u201casparagus\u201d and it\u2019s a male noun. And why can\u2019t people understand the difference between the written form of soundalikes \u201calumni\u201d (male plural) and \u201calumnae\u201d (female plural)? It drives me crazy when a reporter writes about some woman and mentions that \u201cshe is an alumnus of so-and-so university\u201d. NO woman is an alumnus of ANY university! \u201cAlumnus\u201d is male. \u201cAlumna\u201d is female.<\/span><\/p>\n See? Latin IS useful! It turns its students into cranky old know-it-alls who no one understands.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next up – MATH!<\/span><\/p>\n Math – especially algebra – was easy (until I got to calculus in college):<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Behind the middle book is this:<\/span><\/p>\n Apparently, it was corrected by another student (signed under my name). The problem I got wrong is on the other side. I\u2019m sure Dad didn\u2019t mind signing this \u201cA\u201d test. \u201c2G\u201d was my sophomore class.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n RELIGION<\/span><\/p>\n Not a lot of respect given to this beat-up old book. I don\u2019t remember if there was an option to buy new books. Given the tuition that had to be paid, it probably made $en$e to keep recycling these books:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Things you always wanted to know about receiving Holy Communion (this is not my handwriting). I had to look up \u201cViaticum\u201d, which is the Eucharist given to a person near or in danger of death (Good news! You don\u2019t have to fast!):<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n HUMOR<\/span><\/p>\n No – not a book about humor (though that would have been an interesting class). Some of the images in our schoolbooks were custom-made for developing teenage senses of humor. The religion book was no exception.<\/span><\/p>\n Take, for example, this handy guide to good personality traits for boys and girls. Though they\u2019re all, um\u2026\u2026..wonderful, I found the \u201cFor Tired Eyes\u201d girls tip and the \u201cFor Well-Toned Muscles\u201d boys tip to be particularly useful for\u2026\u2026\u2026.well, no one:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n These next two were there when I got the book\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026honest!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n HISTORY (Part 2)<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s that other history book I mentioned earlier:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Given my upbringing, it\u2019s possible that the second image\u2019s notation could be mine:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n BIOLOGY<\/span><\/p>\n Another not-exactly-new book:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Everyone\u2019s two favorite bio lab experiments:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is definitely my high school handwriting:<\/span><\/p>\n (and Procter & Gamble owe me about 60 years of advertising royalty payments)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n YAWN!<\/span><\/p>\n I absolutely do not remember this class, this book or anything about either:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Someone had to write 3 letters on the page edges to remind us what class this was:<\/span><\/p>\n It was all stories and poems that no one cared about or retained. Somehow<\/em>, we navigated life just fine without them.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Its slightly more-interesting sibling:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I found a couple of beat-up, old notebooks under it all:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was a compilation of previous 3-hour exams to prep us for finals (I think), put together by the school\u2019s baseball coach (who I also had as instructor in a Business Law class). The second pic shows a General Science test from the school year before I started there:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n These last 5 images were quite a surprise to find because they were from that year before I started at BC, when I was in 8th grade at Holy Trinity in Hackensack.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with this book(let?) that I don\u2019t recall. The note inside was written in May of 1961, so it\u2019s from 8th grade. It shows that my vocabulary was sufficiently built up enough to be able to substitute a word I knew I could spell correctly:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next up is this very strange, stapled-on book cover that has the word \u201cScience\u201d handwritten on it. It also says \u201c8A\u201d – my class at HTS – on the bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t draw to save my life, so I\u2019m wondering if this was a used book whose artwork I inherited. Unfortunately, only my<\/em> name is on it, so\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pulling back on the ugly cover revealed what the real cover looked like. Seems harmless enough\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.why cover it?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The inside the cover info:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A confident student\u2019s note found inside:<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/0A-IMG_7578-min.jpg\")
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