Nostalgic Back-to-School Items Boomers Will Remember

Going Back — Way Back — to School

Revisit memories of bad haircuts No 2 pencils metal lunch boxes and the intoxicating smell of mimeograph paper

Lunch Box and Thermos

What's on that bread? Butter? Mayonnaise? And remember the sound of breaking glass when you accidentally dropped your Thermos and the liner shattered?

Slide Rule

This seems an unnecessarily complicated way just to calculate the result of "3 x 1 = ?" but they also were amazing devices in the days before hand-held calculators.

Mimeograph

Remember the blue sheets that were typed out by your teacher, loaded into this machine and used to make pop quizzes? Remember that sound of the machine being cranked?

Pennants

They were a required accessory for being true to your school. No bedroom wall of a sports fan was truly decorated without one.

Desks

This was your reaction when you saw your first Science Fair volcano. If you were lucky, you got a desk with a storage space underneath the seat.

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Abacus

This was another handy tool for calculating your math answers, or just for playing with the beads and pretending you were doing homework.

Flash Cards

They were simple, useful and potentially trauma-inducing, but they were also how generations of children learned basic math tables.

Waiting for the Bus

Here's a school ritual that is still common today. And officer, shouldn't that sign be out in the street?

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