Marilyn's Photos - July 31 2025 - Back end of summer coming
I now experience August as the "back-end" of summer. That's because there is back to school, Halloween and even Christmas-themed items are at Michaels and Dollarama, giving me the sense summer is finished. I think of this as "anticipation living." That's where we are living "into the future", in anticipation of and preparing for the next major event or holiday.
I guessed that our attention spans have shortened so that we "move on" to the next thing very quickly. I wonder if there's any research in this area - remember the attention span research about the decrease in seconds making us equivalent to goldfish. It turned out to be false information. I don't see any scientific information pop up on societal attention spans.
Can we have back to school sales before summer school is finished? What a travesty overlap that would be. Don't worry, summer school is finished. It ran July 2 to July 25 (or 29). And there's another difference from my youth. It is now promoted as an opportunity for students to continue learning in the summer. Summer students have access to live tutors in the evenings and on weekends. I liked school, so that would have been fun for me. Instead, when I was a youth, summer school was a punishment for those who failed a particular subject, forcing the student to take summer classes so they could move to the next grade. Definitely ruining summer playing and fun.
Maybe I am contemplating this because it seems that back-to-school shopping was secondary to me. Primary was the arrival of the Eaton's and the Simpsons Catalogues. My friend, Janet, and I would pour through each and every section choosing our favourites. I seem to think this happened in August, but there's no information on when the catalogue was sent out. Back to school wasn't nearly as much fun as future living. And how much back to school was there in the 1950s and 1960s - a few notebooks, pens and pencils.
I guess Janet and I were doing our version of "anticipation living" - take a look through pages from a 1975 Eaton's catalogue HERE - everything a house and person could imagine having. Today we scroll, back then we turned the pages. Maybe it isn't that different today compared to 60 years ago. What do you think?
Here's a nostalgic door number with the Flamingo embellishment. This was on our neighbour's house in Toronto. I would think this was original to the house, so maybe the house number and house year around 1950 synchronized..
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