Back when backpacks were for hikers and pants pockets held combs, not phones — when you didn’t want your new school clothes to look TOO new (like sneakers so white they were blinding, or corduroy pants that made noise like a hacksaw on a 2-by-4 when you walked) — when the only electronic item school kids carried was a boombox (if they were cool) or a calculator (if they weren’t) — getting ready for the first day of school was so different.

It meant getting three folders (PeeChee!) and some electrical tape and creating a six-subject all-purpose organizer that would hold every paper for every class. On the outside, a clear sheet of plastic cut from a report cover was taped down on three sides, with the fourth left open to create a pocket for displaying the photo of a current love interest, pages from a surfing magazine (if you were really cool, you burned the edges for effect … tricky tricky), Town and Country yin-yang surf stickers and the carefully curly handwritten lyrics to a popular love song (to be replaced by the lyrics to a popular breakup song later in the year when feelings changed). The really advanced version of this project was the half-folder. When built with the precise placement of tape, that folder could last for years.

And that was about it for back-to-school prep.

Sure, during the first week all the assigned textbooks had to be covered with brown grocery bags or the free book covers distributed at school by the Army recruiter. (And if you never learned to how to properly fold and tape a paper bag book cover, your mother would do it and put the Longs or Ooka’s Supermarket logo on the outside. So shame.)

Back then the first day of school meant writing your name inside the cover of the assigned textbook and checking to see whether any cute upperclassmen had held that book in the past. That’s back when the first day of school was in September, and there was no such thing as hand sanitizer, so parents had to take turns buying boxes of Kleenex for the classroom. Every school required a protractor, though few kids ever learned to use one.

Now parents download detailed grids listing each specific item that must be purchased for each specific class at each specific school: crayons and colored pens and colored pencils. Fine-tip Sharpies, and ultra-fine-tip Sharpies. Specific- colored folders, each for a different subject. Boxes of pre-sharpened pencils plus a pencil sharpener. And everything has to be labeled, including the label-maker.

The PeeChee-and-electrical-tape folder is an iPad. The plastic-cover pocket to display surf photos and current sweethearts is wallpaper.

But the look in the kids’ eyes (excitement and nerves and rush of starting a new adventure) and in the teachers’ eyes (like the kids, but a bit more guarded) is the same.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.