Looking back on my youth, I am reminded of a simpler time. The man was still keeping me down, but found simpler ways to nurture my early neurotic tendencies.
Throughout my schooling, teachers always reminded us to think outside the box. Be unconventional. Yet in elementary school, structure was forced upon us from the getgo. We were introduced to this foreign concept called ‘margins‘. To this day, I can only guess the purpose of these so-called ‘margins‘.
On every assignment we were forced to draw these lines a specific length from the edge of every sheet of paper. With each torturous page, two new lines had to be measured out and drawn. As a lefty, it was quite common that I smeared these lines while trying to write my assignment. Heaven forbid that I should need to erase something on these low quality pieces of lined yellow paper. I take that pencil, invert, put the eraser to the paper and immediately thereafter the paper disintegrated and you ended up erasing the notes you wrote to yourself on the surface of your desk. If any words crossed these ‘margins‘, 5 points were deducted for each offense.
Way, to teach me to think outside the box, Teach. All you showed me how to do was construct the walls for my own box of orthodoxy! No, nothing traumatizing about that at all.
Hey school people, if you pay 5 cents more for a ream of lined paper, the margins are already on there.
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