1.) Bag milk. Until second or third grade, my elementary school served individual milk bags during lunch. Which was fine, unless you stabbed them the wrong way. Then they exploded. We definitely had cartons by third grade, though, because I remember spilling one all over myself. I’ve heard that bagged milk is common in other parts of the world, though.
2.) At my junior high, you could get rid of gym demerits by showering after gym class. Like, if you forgot your uniform or missed a class at some point you could improve your GRADE if you took a shower. I’m sure this was for hygienic purposes, because they didn’t want students to stew in their own filth after working out, but I was blessed by the schedule gods every year and had gym class at or near the end of the day, and thus, never had to shower at the school. Because those showers were gross, and I was not stripping in front of my classmates. Swimming class was bad enough.
3.) BIG pencils. Do they still make young kids use those huge black pencils while learning to write? The ones with no erasers? I absolutely hated using them – especially when we got to the cursive unit – and I irrationally blame them for my poor handwriting to this very day. Speaking of which, do they even teach cursive any more?
4.) Gymnastics in gym class. Not only did we have a gymnastics unit every year until high school, we were forced to do a synchronized gymnastics routine with a partner in eighth grade. Which is cruel, really. Fortunately, I used to be (USED TO BE) pretty good at gymnastics. I just thought it sucked for the kids who weren’t flexible or necessarily skilled at somersaults or handstands. It’s not what I’d call a morale-booster of a sport. Then again, we also played dodge-ball, so…
5.) Square dancing in gym class. I’m not sure how many schools offer dancing of any kind as a unit, but since I live in an area known as Pennsyltucky, square dancin’ and line-dancin’ were a popular choice. I opted for Tai Chi, instead. I still remember the move “Parting the Horse’s Mane.” It’s become my signature party move.
6.) Bowling in gym class. This is the LAST gym class-related one, I swear. But since my high school was down the street from a bowling alley, we could actually take bowling as a unit. HOWEVER, if you sucked at bowling, you wouldn’t get a good grade, since your grade was your score. I took bowling twice, but due to a knee injury, I almost got stuck with a 54 in sophomore year. Fortunately, an excellent essay on duck pin bowling saved me from failure.
7.) Trash lockers. The cafeteria at my high-school was being renovated for like, 2 years. So, for a significant portion of my high school experience, we ate lunch in various classrooms and in the hallways. If you had an empty locker in an area where lots of folks ate lunch, you could end up being the unfortunate owner of a “trash locker.” Lots of students didn’t use their lockers (opting, instead, to carry all of their books in their backpack and thus developing severe spine problems) so folks would toss their trash into empty lockers after lunch. And then, when locker-clean out happened at the end of the year… well… it wasn’t pretty.
Frostwritten 