Kids these days

[triskellian]

(In backlash against being five yesterday, today I shall be seventy-five ;-)

Parts of my journey to work are shared by dozens of teenagers walking to school, and I have observed that all of them wear their backpacks properly, on both shoulders. What is the world coming to? In my day, no one used both shoulder straps, and backache be damned!

[Poll #1023562]

Comments

[white_hart]

There was a fashion among some of the girls at my school to have bags that were only big enough for exercise books and pencil cases, and to carry folders and textbooks loose (or more often in a plastic carrier bag to stop them turning into papier-mache if it rained), but that always struck me as slightly silly. Your arms would get tired, and if you had to stand up on the bus it was difficult to hold your books *and* hold on to a seat to stop yourself falling over when it went round corners.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

Luckily for the followers of fashion at my school there was never any requirement to use a bus (most were boarders, a small proportion lived very locally), just to walk between lessons. They also had lockers to keep the books in, so it was only necessary to carry a few at any one time. Pens &c. could go in one's blazer pocket.

[white_hart]

I lived two and a half miles from my secondary school. We didn't have lockers or blazers, and as well as books I frequently had to carry one or more of PE kit/musical instrument/ingredients for cookery lesson. Which made having a bag that I could at least fit all my books and my packed lunch in fairly essential ;-)