Pencilcases and Pocketbooks

  It didn't seem strange or unusual, at the time, but we went all through high school with only pencilcases to hold our possessions, items both school-related and personal.  There was no reason why we girls didn't have purses; I'm sure they were available at the time.  We just didn't. Pocketbooks were carried by our mothers, though as teens we did use a pocketbook when we went to church.     Pencilcases were for school.  Why would we have needed cumbersome pocketbooks to hold our stuff when a small pencilcase could hold a pen, pencils, possibly a compass, and our personal items of pocket comb and lipstick, and some change for lunch or the vending machine in the girls' lavatory.  What else did we need?  When we were sophomores several new students transferred into our school, from Nortonville.  I think their school had closed or consolidated or something.  The girls were nice and friendly, and fit right in.  The only anomaly was that all the girls, about 4 I think, carried purses.  They seemed to us like ladies; we mere schoolgirls. 
   I know when we commuted to college, we had pocketbooks.  But even more memorable than our pencilcase days, we carried our books in our arms.  It seems everybody did, though I have no way now of checking that fact. I know I never saw a backpack; they were only for camping. We girls carried our books, a considerable load of them, not only to our classes, which were spread out during the day through several buildings, but also, as commuters, back and forth to our homes.  Via trains, cars and busses.  And we carried them in our outstretched arms in front of our bodies, with our purse, if we had one, dangling below, which made it awkward for us to buy and deposit our bus fare, as well as climbing the steps, running to board on time, and the various other contortions associated with transferring onto crowded busses, and squeezing into the  back seats of  cars. etc.  We were in hell and didn't realize it, not fully anyway.