Back to school time! Suddenly September, even though retailers have been endlessly hyping our ninth month for weeks. They were hoping that parents would spring for school supplies while rain closed the swimming pools or before the pools closed for good.

Suddenly September and I admit it, I am feeling like a piece ready for display on “Antiques Road Show.” I am an old fogey, a dinosaur, a relic. The ringing of the school bell is not behind my malaise nor is my identifying with the brontosaurus. It is the comparison of how it was. . .with how it is.

I simply find it difficult-to-impossible to comprehend all the new devices, gimmicks, time-saving ideas that pop up daily in the world in which we live. As the new unfolds I can’t help but remember the old. And that is why I am feeling like the old fogey.

When my five children were in our public school system we read the announcement of school’s starting date in the newspaper with a sigh of relief. (I must state here that I am not the mother of quints, just five kids so close in age that at one time we had a child in all but one of the grades in our local elementary school.) We then made a ritual journey to the closest drug or dime store (then a People’s or Woolworth’s—both gone from our area now).

If I was lucky or extremely cagey, I managed to convince my husband to make this trip for school supplies. Each child would choose a loose-leaf notebook in a favorite color, one or two #10 pencils with erasers and, for the youngest, a box of crayons. Decisions were agonizing: the right colors, the number of crayons, and did Miss so-and-so let you bring scissors? The entire adventure took an hour or two at the most.

I cannot honestly say that I remember enjoying this experience. I can state unequivocally that I felt elated knowing that soon, oh, blessedly soon, all five would be someone else’s responsibility for the better part of the weekday.

I have no recollection of purchasing a backpack or duffel bag or any equipment for carrying books. Am I so far gone that I have erased all such memories? There must have been homework and reading requirements 30 years ago. Did any books ever come home? I am certainly going to check with one or more of my offspring on that point. Lunchboxes were an extra, I do remember that. I can still see the Barbies, the G.I. Joes, the Mrs. Beasleys: all icons at that time, all re-runs at the present.

Today’s parents have it made, or so the advertisements make us believe. Come for your one-stop school shopping at any of the big office supply stores, and you’ll be out in minutes. (And out of cash in less time than that.) Today these stores have printouts from every grade in every school, city and county, so our moppets purchase just the right box of crayons, the exact marking pens, specific notebooks.

Organization and quantity, key components for a successful school year. And all of this pre-ordained purchasing geared specifically toward saving parents’ precious time.

I cannot help but wonder what parents do with all this “saved time”? Read “Make Way for Duck-lings” to kindergartners, “Harry Potter” to the older set?

That is a subject for another essay, another day. Right now I am out of laser labels for my printer.

I am pondering when I can safely venture to the office supply store near me without being waylaid by a mob of youngsters purchasing last-minute school necessities.

Fogey, also fogy: A person of stodgy or old-fashioned habits and attitudes. 

Barbara Dickinson, a Roanoke novelist and sometime painter, realistically thinks she may be more nostalgic and less fogeyish.