Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
so we’re about at the end of Summer, which can only mean one thing: school shirts.
As with most of this blog, we place less value on the certainty that what we write makes sense to any random Reader and all of it (value) on those who get it.
Unlike the vast majority of popular of general and special interest blogs, we rely on a certain quality of Reader.
Of course, from all reports, the blogosphere is not what it was back in 2009 when we wrote our first post.
It was a glorious time. A time of ideas and acceptance and the rogerian bloggers covered the landscape, as far as the eye could read.
but, we digress
in the earliest of Doctrine posts we spoke of people with a certain quality, call it intellectual adventurism. A self-confidence that encourages experimentation and embraces the odd and unusual.
As with most things Doctrine, (and implicitly one’s efforts to become fluent in the perceptual dialect of the world as experienced by three predominant worldviews (aka clarks/Outsiders, scotts/Predators and rogers/Herd Members), the more one learns, the more there is to see/experience.
But today the magic word is ‘school shirt’.
not for nothin’ but the Wakefield Doctrine is, when you cut out the fun (like who would want to do that?!?) is simply a metaphor, albeit a behavioral metaphor.
And god know, your Curator do loves them metaphors.
To the shirts (new) and you’ll be free to wander the earth (for today).
So the weather becomes humid. But the morning sky is a deep blue. The search for fun becomes increasingly desperate. Unspoken is the challenge: What Did You Do this Summer?
…and then the school shirt. Smelling of plastic, tissue paper rustling dryly and glinting, the pins. If you are too young, the command arrives, “Try one on. Let’s sit if if fits.”
The smell of industrial starch in the perfectly smooth fabric is part of the plan to distract you from that one last pin. As much as you shake out the shirt, the primary creases remain, the hidden serrated edge waiting for your second-of-the-Summer burn to come into range.
… next stop: grocery bags to be cut up into book covers.
About clarkscottroger
I remember “that one last pin” in new shirts. I never understood why they put any pins in them.
me neither I seem to recall it (the last pin) being either at the bottom of the front (row of buttons) or the more dreaded, in the collar (well, underneath it)
It wasn’t just the shirts, it was an entire uniform, ugly, but at least no uglier than what the next girl was wearing. And later, we didn’t cut the book covers ourselves, they came from various companies with ads on the outside.
Don’t forget, on the inside front cover was the list of who had used it, and you put your name and the school year so if your identical book got lost or mixed with another, they could tell whose was whose, as well as who was dog-earing and writing in their book, although you could always blame one of the previous users unless it was a new book, which only happened if they came out with a new edition.
We’ll save the end of the year inspection of said books, and fussing by Sister Ruth over how sloppy your uniform had become, until May.