County near Flint Hill VA. If you're a parent of a school age child and you live within about 30 miles of Wakefield, I highly recommend you consider enrolling your child here.
A fact of life at Wakefield was your book bag. It was not unusual for elementary and middle school kids to carry around a large sportsbag like the Wilson bag pictured here.
These bags were stuff full of books because it wasn't unusual for each class to require 3 books. When I attended the Wakefield school day was about 2 hours longer than public school education, so you had a lot of books to carry. That meant that without a bag of some sort it was pretty much impossible to go from class to class or to take books home to study.
Well, my parents couldn't really afford Wakefield, so we cut costs where we could. Those sports bags weren't cheap, so my mom fished a bag out of the thrift store that could do the job just as well.
From an adult's standpoint, I suppose my bag was a pretty close match. I mean both bags have zippers and handles. Mine was a little taller rather than wider. Both bags have a place where you carry your books. My bag was safety orange. All in all, a pretty ugly bag.
About half-way through the 7th Grade I transferred to Strasburg Middle School. As good as Wakefield was, those schools in the shadow of Signal Knob were about as good a public education gets anywhere. But things were a little different in Shenandoah County.
You didn't take Algebra in the 6th grade at Shenandoah County. You didn't take French from kindergarten on up. There were lots of little things like that, so my parents had me bumped up a grade when I made the transfer.
That meant I was suddenly the littlest kid in the class.
Of course, in Strasburg, middle school students didn't need a giant book bag. In fact, you didn't really need a book bag at all. I learned some kids actually carried their books---get this---in their arms!
Someone could have given me a clue that I wouldn't need a book bag. Well someone did give me a clue and one of those somebodies was Richard Carbaugh.
On one hand you have me, the spindly under-aged prep-nerd with the bookbag and you have Richard Carbaugh big healthy red neck in an untucked flannel shirt. I've not seen Richard, other than on Facebook, in more than twenty years. Then and now, he was a big guy with a big neck and a big smile. He was generally a good guy, but had a quick wit that could cut to the truth in a flash.
Richard asked me, "Why are you carrying a purse?"
This wasn't so much a question, as a piercing insight. Point Carbaugh.
Richard suddenly caused me to take a look at my bag in a new light. He was right ... it was a little purse-like. "Damn it."
But here is my curse and blessing: I'm not the kind of person that accedes to peer pressure, ever. Maybe there is something broken in me. I say this because there are times when peer pressure is a good thing. Richard was sort of doing me a favor by calling that bag out ... but by God I wasn't going to bend to his will or anyone else's will.
Here's how my convoluted thinking works. If I stopped carrying the purse, then I have admited that Richard was right. But if I continue to carry the pur ... er ... book bag then the it's still a book bag and was never a purse. Point for me. Take that Carbaugh.
So, even though I didn't need the pur ... er .. book bag, but I simply refused to stop carrying it because I thought that meant I was admitting to Richard. So, what I did was a took a Sharpie and a Magic Marker and put graffiti all over the bag.
Now with Napoleon Dynamite styled "ligers" and my name in big bold letters no one could call this book bag a purse. I had created a real manly bag. If you can't tell I'm being extremely sarcastic. The truth is I couldn't have been a bigger enemy to myself unless I'd used that same marker to write "I am a dork" across my forehead.
So I refused to stop carrying the bag and Richard Carbaugh ... and Doug Clem and just about every other kid in my class gave me a little hell about it. But this bag is where I had planted my flag and here is where I would fight my battle.
I grew to really hate that orange graffiti-covered bag that I didn't really need, but I refused to stop carrying it because I didn't want to admit they were right. But damn it ... and it's 35 years late ... but I'm admitting you were right:
It was a purse.
I didn't know it was a purse, but once good ole Mr. Carbaugh pointed out that fact, I didn't have the common sense to just chuck the thing in a garbage bin. I was so happy when that school year ended because I pitched that book bag and refused to ever carry a bag in high school. Of course, once we got to high school, a lot of kids used book bags to carry books from class to class. Not me, mind you. But a lot of kids. Was I traumatized? Well, to this day I don't much like it when my wife asks me to hold her purse for even a minute. But do I blame Richard? Do I think he traumatized me? Nope. I traumatized myself. I blame myself for being a doofus and for being so stubborn. I had choices. I could have pitched the bag because he was right. Or I could have called him out and said, "I don't care if it looks like a purse. It's my book bag." Instead I chose to be doofus and draw ligers on my purse. In every story there is a lesson, so here's the lesson to learn. If someone is right, just admit they're right and move on. On the other hand, don't back down when you're right. And don't keep it to yourself. You'll respect yourself more and others will respect you if you just say what you are thinking. To apply the lesson here, I should have either thrown the purse away or I should have hit Richard with my purse and called him a masher. For more information or to set up an appointment call Nesbitt Realty at (703)765-0300.-
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