Old School

The other day at a meeting, a young administrator pulled out his smart phone/i-touch/handheld electronic device of some sort to look up the date of our next committee meeting. At the same moment I opened my Filofax and announced the date of the next meeting, and the one after that. And the one after that. The information was right at my fingertips. Ever so satisfied smug, I snapped my planner closed.

And so the day has come that I am officially old school: the new old-fashioned, that word we flung at our parents with such contempt. How embarrassing when my father would pull out his sometimes monogrammed handkerchief –well, it was a husteczka (hoo-stech’-kuh) to me— to blow his nose in church. (C’mon, dad, can’t you use Kleenex?!) (Even though it did come in handy.)

Flash forward thirty years in my classroom and there I was, not reaching for au courant pocket-sized technology, but pulling out a bulky (but pretty) (and handy) leather planner, leaving my cell phone in my purse. Cell phones are for talking and texting, i.e., communicating; calendars are for planning. Old school.

At least there is a cell phone.

Now If I could only find a pack of pencil tip erasers that aren’t neon.