The Limits of Nostalgia

Over on Pinterest you can find endless ideas for chalkboard paint.  Anything, it seems, can be turned into a black chalkable surface: benches, wine glasses, walls, cupboard doors, trays, and jar lids.  Even little chalkboards.

Some of the ideas are really cute, and I might try a few some day, such as the painted file cabinet.

However.  I have my limits, and my theory is that only a white-board-and-dry-erase-marker generation could go this crazy for black chalkboards.

I went to school and also taught for three years to the tune of clicking and scraping chalk.  I associate chalkboards with white dust on my hands, with erasers that became so loaded with dust they left a white swath behind, with standing on the steps after school like a real pioneer schoolmarm and clapping erasers while the dust blew off in the wind, with that unique chalk-dusty smell that was wonderful on the first day of school but by the end of April, when you were up at the board with a 12-year-old boy who had just come in from a hard game of softball on a hot day and couldn't figure out 3-digit multiplication, the combined smell of chalk and everything else made you want to haul in a pressure washer with soap and bleach, and hose down the board, the boy, yourself, the whole room.

Also, at the crucial moment when you were trying to teach decimal-dividing to fidgety sixth graders, suddenly every piece of chalk in the room would be down to bare nubbins and you wouldn't have any more in your desk drawer.

I say "you."  But maybe it was just "me.

Those of us who have experienced stuff first-hand have our limits on how excited we get about it on Pinterest.  Chalkboards, Amish stuff, manual typewriters, milk buckets, rotary dial phones, and ticking alarm clocks.

I wonder which of our things will be displayed on our grandchildren's mantels and end tables as vintage treasures.  Clear plastic bathroom soap dispensers?  HP Officejet printers?  Tupperware Fix-n-Mix bowls?  Styrofoam drumstick trays?

And: What will they wish I'd saved for them that I toss in the trash now with cavalier disdain?

Quotes of the Day:
Me: So, when they gave that history at the Mennonite Home dinner, did they have it right about Frank and Annie and all that?
Grandma: 'Bertha' said they did NOT get it right!  It wasn't just Frank that did all the work!  Loras Neuschwander would go up there a lot with his cat.
Amy: With. . .his. . .cat??
Me: Caterpillar!  Big earthmoving machine!
Amy: Ah.
*     *     *
Ben: Where's Stevie?
Emily: I wonder.
*     *     *
Me: [getting Sunday dinner ready] Someone put ketchup in something attractive.
Emily: [gets out ketchup bottle] Here, Steven, open wide.