Story of Geometry Box and other school memories

I was admiring my friend Ning's pencil holder today and then we started talking about different kind of Pencil Boxes. Her daughter has one from China which has levels that open up when you open the lid. She also remembered the foam pencil boxes with magnet closure that could be opened on either side. If the magnet got messed up, you would have a mess of pencils and erasers in your bag.

This reminded me of my quest for "Camel Geometry" Box. During my school days we used to get two different brands of Geometry boxes - Camel and Nataraja. Geometry box is basically a Tin Pencil holder with all the tools needed for a geometry class like Set Squares, Protractor, Compass, Divider etc. You could also carry a pencil, pen or eraser in this box. Nataraja brand was slightly cheaper compared to Camel, so my Mom was like just buy that, as I had a tendency to lose things. Also this cover of this brand had a matte finish. So, I would sit in the class room bench flanked by two of my friends who would open up their shiny Camel Geometry boxes and I would open my box stealthily under the desk and not keep it on top of the desk. Thus began my saga of convincing my parents that I just could not do without the CAMEL Geometry box. :)

Top 5 Childhood school memories that arose due to the discussion on Pencil box,

1. Chalk on white canvas shoes - We used to have white uniform along with white canvas shoes for Saturdays and I always used to forget to apply white shoe polish to my canvas shoes the day before. Since these were canvas shoes, we used to get this wet white polish - the shoe had to be washed, dried and then coated with this wet polish that needed some time to dry and hence had to be applied the day before. So, to avoid getting caught in the inspection line at School, I would take white chalk and methodically cover the whole shoe, so it would look like I had applied polish to it.

2. Distributing Chocolates on your birthday - We could wear a non Uniform dress on our birthdays to School (if it fell on a school day) and we could take some "chocolates" to distribute to the whole class. It would be something inexpensive like Individually wrapped Eclairs or something like that. It was really fun.

3. Getting Autograph books signed at the end of every major school year end - Typically 7th grade, 10th grade and 12th grade. I am not even sure where my autograph books are now and what was the whole point of it. It was not like at that point we had cell phones, twitter/facebook accounts or anything. Many of us did not even have Landlines. So, it would be some sort of "you are the best friend" epithet followed by signature and lots of doodling. I cannot believe how much we used to search for the perfect Autograph book and have long discussions about whom we should ask and whom we should not ask.

4. Amarchitra Katha, Chandamama and other fun comics - I love these comics and would wait with bated breath for the release of new one. My favorites were Amar Chitra Katha, Wisdom, Tinkle and Chandamama. Chandamama used to have these series that I would be waiting for. Wisdom was perfect for all the trivia and for me to conduct quizzes for the youngsters in our neighborhood. I still remember the day when my cousins introduced me to TinTin and Asterix. Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles, thousand of thundering typhoons...Amazing.

5. Games - There were all these different games that we would play. Four Squares, Gold Spot, Crocodile can we cross the river, hopscotch and what not....Another post another time to talk more about these games.

Please share some of your school related memories....