School Days Are Here Again

Pre-Kinder

School has just recently started…

One of my most favorite activities at the start of the school year is buying School supplies…

Yes, you heard me…school supplies.

Not the first day of school…
Not meeting the new teachers…
Not even seeing my friends…

… Even more than starting to receive weekly allowances again. (Finally… after two whole months of being absolutely broke!!!)

Definitely NOT the homework.

School Supplies.

Mom would give us a budget and all of us would trek on to National Bookstore to choose our school supplies for the year.

Everyone would have a list. So many regular notebooks, one math, a few black and blue pens. One red (optional)….in case you are obsessive compulsive (like me and Lynette) and need a red pen in order to check your classmate’s quizzes when the teacher says “Exchange papers with your seatmate and check their answers”

There were the various sizes of pad paper, whole, halves, one thirds (which were one half of a whole sheet, only cut vertically… I know…weird for school lingo…I guess to distinguish them from the one which were cut horizontally in half. ) and of course, fourths.

Then highlighters. Yellow, blue, green, pink… whatever was the desired at the time.

Lots and lots of plastic wrapping and tape of course.

Pencils, brown envelopes, large plastic envelopes, pencil cases, erasers, pentel pens, and the huge bags…more like luggage actually.

For myself, I would get my favorites which were the blue Corona Spiral notebooks which had just the right amount of space between the lines and the actual lines were stick straight and light grey colored and not distracting in the least.

I like the Intermediate brand of pad papers. The pens must be panda and highlighters were Stabilo (which I in fact didn’t buy since Sammy used to give them to me for my birthday…she got it from her mom who got them from lalalalala) Stabilos were too expensive. Normally, I used those dermatograph pens. The waxy colored crayon things wrapped in strips of paper… the ones which had a string attached on its side? You pull the string to “sharpen” the paper?

Pencils must be Mongol number 3, erasers were whatever the current shape was “in” at the time, the rulers were the ones with the light blue plastic jacket. Bond paper, the best kind was and still is Corona bond paper.

On a side story, when I was in grade school, my teacher would ask us to bring over coppon bond for the next days assignment. I would go home, call up Mom from IH and ask her to bring me the paper that started with the letter C. I could never remember the entire name, so when asked what I wanted, I would tell ma that I needed some paper tat started with C. So Mom would bring home some from lalalala. And I’d proudly go to school with an entire packet of paper. When I get there, for some reason, everyone’s paper would be white, and mine would always be black.

Carbon Paper.

Well, it did start with a C.

This happened so often that if I rummage around a bit, I’m sure I still have a couple of packets of in my filing cabinet.

When we were young though, one of the things we didn’t look forward to a whole lot was buying the black school shoes.

At the time, the one and only shoe that was acclaimed by one and all, for its quality, its sturdiness and durability was Gregg shoes.

Gregg shoes at San Juan.

Where there was a rarity of parking all the time.

Its main boast was its durability.

Durability…

The parents lauded it that was its best quality

For the kids though, that was actually its worst fault…

Gregg shoes were in fact, virtually indestructible…meaning so long as your feet did not grow much, you kept that shoe forever and ever.

And if the parent was lucky, and the child unlucky…

Their next child would grow into what the first child has grown out of.

A little shoe polish, a new sole and it was virtually brand new.

That never happened to me though…because Jo Ann hated those shoes.

First Day

She once wanted a new one so bad that she did whatever she could think of to try to destroy those shoes, she dragged them around, threw them all over the place. Banged things on them, and tried to tear them to pieces. No success. They were Gregg shoes.

She just had to wait till she outgrew them.

By the time she did, I had started school in JASMS and since they had no uniforms, I wore sneakers all the time.

High school was when our preference of shoes changed. I started buying Bandolino shoes. It was soft and cushy and comfortable. They looked really well too.

But as in all things, they had one minor fault.

They squeaked…

A lot.

In a parade of students going to the canteen at recess, you could tell who were wearing Bandolino shoes because of all the squeaking. It was the same pitch, tone and duration.

Everyone knew everyone else who had them.

It was almost a secret club…hear a squeak, look up, and give each other a wink and a smile.

“Bandolino shoes…right?”


I haven’t seen those in a long time. There is no one around here who still has to wear standard black school shoes.

Bandolino Shoes

I wonder if they ever got those fixed.