Tomorrow marks the end of the long school summer holiday and the start of the new school year in Queensland. Every year we go through the tedious ritual of wrapping all of the new writing books (this year for us it's 19 books!) in sticky plastic contact paper to reinforce them. The plastic is very unforgiving. If you stick it on wonky, that's the way it's going to stay forever... and if you get a huge bubble in it but have already stuck the edges down it's almost impossible to un-peel it and do it again. You spend ages trying to smooth out the stupid wrinkles and suddenly, getting a book with no wrinkles becomes a very important thing and if you've got wrinkles all over the place... well you feel like a bit of a failure. And that's even before the first bell goes.
Why don't they just produce the books with reinforced covers in the first place?? I reckon there are some perverted people out there that actually ENJOY it.
7 comments:
This is the first year in what seems like forever that I'm not contacting the books. Baby no. 2 finished school in November. No more school for us :).
I would hate to think how many bubbles and wrinkles we got over the years.
This year I invested money in plastic book covers. They are worth every cent! And if they survive the year, can be used again next year. It took me about 2 minutes to cover the books although I will still struggle with clear contact on the text books! The things we do!
Wow! Sounds a lot harder than the plain brown paper & sticky tape days!
Back in my more youthful days in the UK we used to use brown paper or wallpaper! Seemd to do a good job and saved the covers from being annihilated! I agree with you...why don't they just produce reinforced covers in the first place?
Best regards from France...
Pierre
This sounds like a metaphor for what's going on with my more mature face! "You spend ages trying to smooth out the stupid wrinkles and suddenly, getting a book (read 'face') with no wrinkles becomes a very important thing and if you've got wrinkles all over the place... well you feel like a bit of a failure. " Although I prefer to call them 'Wisdom Lines' :-)
I remember the days when Mum used to work in the school library and bring home my school books before school started; already covered in the thick plastic with tape on them. She had covered them all in that thick, hardy plastic that used to be on all the library books... great stuff that. And - wow! - did it last!
When I hit high school, we had two 3-ring binders and dividers for our subjects and were lent textbooks by the school. Depending on how the books were treated by the students from the previous year, it depended on their condition when they got to us. I got a Maths textbook that was is rotten condition in year 10 and the Science textbook for the same year was in almost-new condition; strange, eh?
Well, that was school for ya. My niece is off to high school this year. She wasn't looking forward to it. But I think she'll be okay.
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