Elementary School Memories

So, I’m reading this book and the narrator (an elementary student) talks about how she is drawing with fruity smelling markers and has to use a mimeograph machine to make a newsletter because the class computer is broken, and all of a sudden I’m transported back to elementary school.

As she talks about the smell of the fruity markers, I am picturing the fat markers with their angled tip, bright colors and lovely scents. I have always longed to have a set of my own. I loved the mint one best. The one that always made me gag was the black one that smelled like licorice.

I can imagine the smell of the ink used to make dittos and I can see the bluish-purple color of the copies it makes. I always hated the smell of the ditto machine, but loved being allowed to make them. I then remembered being allowed to help the teacher make the die-cut letters for the bulletin board with the die-cut machine. The reason I remembered it was because it sat next to the mimeograph machine.

I’ve also been remembering computer classes of elementary school. When I started to be exposed to computers, we used the really big and actually floppy disks (and teeny weeny monitors). The most exciting thing we got to do with computers was program a turtle on the screen to make a square or circle around the monitor. If you are so inclined to see the tremendous effort we children had to go to to get said turtle to make a shape, just read here about Logo (scroll down for pictures of the turtle). We didn't have a robot turtle that moved on the floor, so don't be thinking it was all that cool...