And before we all had backpacks ...?

I was loading up my backpack this morning, getting ready to leave the coffee shop, head for home, when I commented to the young man about to swoop in and take "my" table: "What did we ever do without backpacks?"

But I know what we did. (I'm "of a certain age.") At school, we carried our books and notebooks. (No, this is not one of those posts you see now and then on FB about how "back in the day, the streetlights told us when it was time to go home"; or "we walked to school in the winter, snow up to our eyelids ....")

There was a gender difference in how we carried our things at school. Boys carried their books at their side (leaving one hand free to punch the arms of people in the halls between classes--or to block same). Girls carried them in front, cradling them. These two pics from my old Hiram High yearbook illustrate the difference.

I commented to my coffee-shop friend that this arrangement made it easy for bullies: just move up behind a boy and poke the books--just knock the pile from a girl's arms. Simple.

Not that I was a bully (well, I was small--had to find victims smaller than I)--not that I was ever bullied.

Yes, I was.

When I was in seventh grade (1956-57), America was divided--not between pro- and anti-Trump but between fans of Elvis, fans of Pat Boone. Elvis was more ... dangerous ... and so in our school he tended to attract the rebels and the wannabe rebels. Boone appealed to the more conventional among us. (I actually liked both of them, truth be told--as I'm sure a lot of others did, too.)

Anyway, Pat Boone was known for wearing white bucks (as the shoes were called).

Somehow, I acquired a pair--and I wore them to school all the time. Until ...

I was on the safety patrol for a while, and the best part of that gig? I got out of school a few minutes early to head down to the first cross street near the school, the cross street where only the elementary school kids observed my flag, my white Sam Browne belt, my badge. Older kids patently ignored me.

But one older kid didn't. (He will remain nameless: I'm still afraid of him.) Every damn day he would walk up to me at the street crossing, put his hand on my shoulder, and wipe the bottom of his shoes across the tops of my white bucks. He would thank me and move on. And that night I would have to brush and polish them again.

Until I got sick of it and quit wearing the shoes.

So over my (many) decades I have learned a few things: use a backpack; don't wear white bucks. These moves will help keep the bullies away.

Life Lessons.