Duly Unnoted

 In 7th grade, our teacher required us to have a composition notebook for Social Studies class. No class list for parents to peruse, just get the notebook. We alll had one; they all looked alike. On social studies days, maybe twice a week if I remember correctly, Mrs.Foster would spend considerable time writing the social studies questions and then the answers to those questions on the blackboards. It took a while because the blackboards covered two sides of the classroom, and she had lots of questions and their answers. We dutifully copied everything she wrote on the board into our notebooks, in pencil. Pens were for grown-ups. (This reminds me that when I was a freshman in college, I turned in an assignment written in pencil and the instructor rejected it--Use ink, she commented.)  Anyway, it took the teacher  a while to write the blackboard assignement, so sometimes I had a wait time until she was in a position so I could see the board.

   At times, my 12-year-old self was feeling emotional about something troubling---the death of my grandmother that fall, an argument at home, a pet  that died, a problem with the roof, I had my pencil in hand, locked and loaded, ready to write. Now the teacher did not collect these notebooks. She may have done an in-classroom check occasionally  to see if we'd all been up to task, but they were ours to keep. All the following test questions would emanate from that notebook. 

  At times, feeling some pressure from my thoughts and fears, I would write personal comments sideways in the margins of my notebook. Nothing bad or inappropriate, but thinking it was out of place and wrong to be mixing my feelings with schoolwork, I would always at some time erase my sad tales from the margins of that dedicated social studies notebook.  Writing my woes down was kind of a self-therapy, I suppose, though not anything acceptable for that time.

I don't write my thoughts and feelings in a notebook that much anymore. Instead I write in my Blog, as the Blog knows, and instead of having to use a pencil eraser to dispose of any potentially troublesome remarks, all I have to do is delete...