Also, my mom always told us (back in the days of letter and note writing) that your pen was often the first impression you made on someone.
That pic brought back memories...chalk dust,cleaning erasers
And that gawd awful ground hamburger with mustard that I
can smell to this day.
I remember the paper they made us use when we were learning how to write upper and lower case letters. We also had writing books where we had to practice our cursive writing. I watched a British program the other night which featured a visit to The Pen Museum in Birmingham, England. At one time Birmingham was the largest manufacturer of the nibs used in ink pens. I had forgotten that as a kid in grammar school, we used wooden pens with nibs inserted in them, and had to dip the nib into the bottle of ink in order to write. It was a very messy way to write, and you had to blot everything so it wouldn’t smudge.
I probably would have been Valedictorian, if it weren’t for handwriting and P.E. grades. Straight A’s on everything else, but I was just a little uncoordinated physically.