I was scrolling through FacePlant today and the Scrap Box posted a pic of shelves full of National Geographic magazines and was asking for more to be donated.

Those of us who collected those (and our PARENTS) may have missed the boat, so to speak. When my in-laws moved from Royal Joke to Crazy Old Florida, they moved their collection of National Geographics to Rick Mott’s garage. I think the magazines eventually got dumped in some way, eco-friendly or not. We had our own smaller collection of NatGeos here at the landfill and I may have been able to recycle them by that time but not sure what I did with them.

National Geographic magazine was a staple in most American “intellectual” households when I was a kid. I dunno where my neighborhood BFF Laurie’s family kept their stash. I do know where the Boult’s kept their stash. It was in the attic. Laurie went to the Catholic grade school while I went to Lincoln School across the street from my house. Stinkin’ Linkin’ was not a bad place to go to school, but I always envied the prodjects the nuns at the Catholic school assigned, where the kids had to study a country or whatever and put together (with paper and glue, etc.) a “report”.

When Laurie was assigned these kinds of projects, I would often do a parallel project alongside her. I would always let her choose the best pictures from National Geographic. After all, she was doing it for a grade. I was just doing it because it was fun and interesting.

The GG is a Catholic school survivor and he has a lot of his own stories. Once when Laurie and I were in 4th grade, she told me that she had shown my shadow project to her nun-teacher and her nun-teacher was very impressed that a public school student was interested enough to follow along. I have saved that memory forever. (Of course I’m sure the nun knew exactly who my family was, Catholic that we were not…)