Back to School with Gabe Henry

If you want to seduce me, don't just yell at me that I need to be seduced, you know, give me some free stuff. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where much as we regret to speak of it, it is back to school season. And with us today is Gabe Henry. Gabe, how are you doing in this season when all the target entrances smell like crayon wax? I'm doing okay. I mean, for me, this time of year is bittersweet because, I mean, I love summer, but I really love fall. I mean, like I'm a sucker for, you know, the apple picking and all the pumpkin stick. Yeah, those apples won't pick themselves. I mean, they will eventually, but then it's harder to eat them. But I mean, this time of year, even though I haven't been in school in a long time, this time of year still brings me joy. I mean, I'm a sucker for, you know, apple picking and all the pumpkin brings back these old feelings of being a kid and starting school again and the end of summer vacation and knowing I'll be going back to a life of homework contests and all that old sense of dread. I mean, it's amazing how your body remembers the school calendar. Yes. I associate it with like a feeling of like both great dread and also great sort of anticipation of like, this is really going to be the year that I get it together. Yeah, there's a similar to New Year's Eve. There's that sense of dread, maybe a sense of like, a little regret. Any kind of new year turning over gives you a little bit of hope, a little bit of dread. But I think with back to school, there's a sense of I can really start a new identity this year because I haven't seen these people in a few months. And I can get a whole new wardrobe. Yeah, you can have that summer transformation. Yeah, I actually remember being a kid and browsing the shelves in some pharmacy and looking at the binders and thinking, should I be a red binder guy this year? Or should I be a blue binder guy again? I mean, what does this binder say about me? What did you go with? I wish I remembered. I do remember clearly picking out the pencil case that zips all the way around and being very proud of that choice. Well, blue is really timeless and classic, you know, and but yeah, these things are important. Yeah, school supplies being like such a fraught thing to write where it was like a way of defining yourself that was also dependent on your parents ability and willingness to spend money on them, or to attempt to get something trendy, and therefore probably annoying. Right? I mean, if you get the knockoff Lisa Frank folders, what are people gonna think? God, I miss Lisa Frank. Lisa Frank was like an acid trip. Baby's first acid trip. Yeah, it's just like all these little cultural artifacts and remnants are just so like, yeah, it's just like all these little cultural artifacts and remnants are just so like, do they know that at a certain time, the like, woman who was going to be okay would potentially have a big coffee table book of newborn babies arranged in giant conch shells and surrounded by flowers and stuff. There was just like, sleeping, I feel like, you know, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, No, they don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, you would like, for example, you would get three sleeping little babies and you would, dress them up as peas and put them in pea pods, or you would put a little little hat on a little baby to make it look like a stamen and put it put the baby inside a giant fake poppy. Like, I can't these were huge. And they and let me say something else that is going to surprise you. If you don't know what I'm talking about. They weren't considered tacky. These were I feel like these were considered to be maybe not like, you know, art or anything. But like, a very normal middle brow, nice, normal lady thing. We were like, babies inside flowers. I don't know that that's neither here nor there. I guess to say that culture changes a lot and has these surprising little wrinkles that you know, then time marches on and you don't hear a lot of references to and I feel like I guess that's kind of your beat over here. And you're going to tell us today about back to school season. And like how and when we started doing this, because it does feel the more we're talking about it, like a very ritualistic, almost wicker man ask, kind of a period when I imagine also, if you're a company, you're going to be depending on making a lot of money. And so we have to also reinforce this idea of like, this like massively important ceremony that you must go through. Right? It is such a familiar ritual. I think we take it for granted. I mean, it feels like it's just part of the seasons. Now anyone who grew up with it, it's like the leaves are changing. Birds are flying south. Target puts out composition notebooks. It's just what happens, right? They put them out way too early. They're out in late July. Yeah, yeah. It's like a very integral part of like the seasons of American life, I would say. Yeah. And it's a very abrupt transition, I would say for a kid. Yes. Because it's summer weather. Yeah. One day it's sunscreen and pool noodles. The next day, it's like summer's over kid, buy a pen. Well, and also because of climate change, you know, I mean, do you remember kind of the sense memory of like wearing clothes that are a little too warm, but you've bought all of your back to school clothes and you're like, I am wearing these. And then you're like, it is too warm. Oh, no. That happened to me. A hundred percent. I think that that window of late summer, early fall, when you misclothe yourself. Yes. When you accidentally wear something too warm or too cold, it's good. That window seems to be getting bigger and bigger for me. Now it feels like six to eight weeks of not knowing how to dress. Yeah. Well, last year in Portland, I was still growing tomatoes until Halloween, you know, but then it's like the, the, the too warmness of the clothes is just part of it. Cause it would be abrupt kind of no matter what you did, but it, yeah, it's like suddenly fall begins, not as a season, but as a state of mind. And you've been on our spelling beat before, but now we're kind of, you know, transitioning, I think via spelling matches to like the weird American pastime beat a little bit. Yeah. I was trying to figure out what my beat is in regards to you're wrong about. And I think it's just anything I found boring in high school. So there's dictionaries and spelling and back to school and we're recording this late summer. You know, if you walk into a target, you're going to see glue sticks. If you walk into a gap, you're going to see back to school styles. It really feels like you're going to see a lot of different styles. And I think that's, I think that's like this natural transition we're going through, but the origins of back to school shopping are pretty, they're actually pretty artificial. I mean, basically it was created as kind of this marketing gimmick during the great depression department stores were struggling. They needed a way to manufacture seasonal hype. And basically what they were trying to do was create a second Christmas and push it into September. Well, that feels about right. And I mean, before this, before depression, there was plenty of late summer school shopping, but most of it was as needed. You know, if you needed new pens, you bought new pens. If your shoes were falling apart, you bought new shoes, but it didn't necessitate a shopping spree. It was not this unified commercial shopping season until department stores really packaged it that way and sold it to us. I mean, it's kind of a hallmark holiday in that sense. Yeah. And one of the things this reminds me of is like the convention of the diamond ring, you know, is the engagement ring. Is obligatory, which seems organic, but was in a similar way created by capitalism generally and De Beers specifically based on the problem of what do we do with all these goddamn diamonds? And the answer is to inflate their value by associating them with a rite of passage in somebody's life. Right. An anniversary Valentine's. Yeah. Right. Cause then you, you start with the diamond engagement ring and then you attach diamonds to like more and more milestones in your life, especially in your marriage. And in this case you have, yeah, similar to Christmas, like a sales event and a marketing event that happens every single year and that you can, you know, fold into your expectations for the amount of money you need to make, I assume. Right. It's created by businesses. It's pushed by businesses. I mean, basically how it started was, so the depression hits in 1929, millions of Americans lose their jobs, retail goes to shit and department stores have to start getting invented so they don't have to do anything else. And then you have the, you know, the, you know, the they come up with promotions like economy days. And this is when all the prices in the store would drop just for one day. They opened up bargain basements, which is when they would shove all their surplus stock and damaged goods into their basements and sell them at heavily discounted prices. So that's how Filene's basement was brought into the world. I believe so. Wow. And department stores, they would hold knitting competitions. They would hold publicity stunts. I mean, all to get people in the door during a time when consumerism was down, the economy was down. One thing I found really funny is that Gimbels, the department store in New York city featured an elf, right? Yes. They try out this marketing tactic called Gimbels tells the whole truth in which they deliberately advertise the flaws in their products so that consumers will theoretically trust them more. So here's a Gimbels ad from 1933. Oh my God. Sale North star and Chatham blankets, dollars and ninety six cents each. salesmen and buyers have handled them a lot so you'll find them slightly must or soiled very fine wool satin bound green orchid blue or beige sorry no mail or phone orders truthfully they are slightly soiled and they end it with an exclamation point god i truthfully they are slightly soiled i would die for an uh you know one of those millions of retailers with an amazon storefront to say truthfully they are slightly soiled you know it's like just tell me if you tell me then i can feel like i'm in cahoots with you to buy this blanket which is a very different experience here's another ad for sandals yeah please sun sing sandals 98 cents they have leather soles and covered cuban heels frankly they are not made for hard wear but if they do last only a few weeks you can afford another pair you isn't there a part of miracle on 34th street where the macy santa claus tells people you know you can't get that here but if you go to gimbals it's a similar thing yes and this thing of right that is it being so unexpected for you to admit to having flaws as a company that it will cause people to trust you which of course can also be used cynically but like god there's nothing like the phrase truthfully they are slightly soiled actually i also want to backtrack to what you said about department stores holding knitting competitions to try and entice people and just point out that you know we're living in an age of companies closing a bunch of stores and blaming large-scale shoplifting which okay i i i don't believe it um i don't believe that they believe it but that's what they're saying and also this sort of attitude on behalf of rick brick and rick and morty retailers and also this belief on behalf of brick and mortar retailers of like we've tried everything and people don't want to come to the store and it's like haven't have one knitting competition nordstrom's yeah if you still exist i can't remember i don't know what it's like in portland but in new york every pharmacy every cvs every walgreens it's all locked every item is locked up deodorants the shampoos yeah well that's what it's like at a lot of stores and then those stores close and they're like everyone's shoplifting and it's like maybe people don't shop there anymore fred meyer because you make them feel like you regard everyone as a shoplifter and you have to track down one of your three employees if you want to buy deodorant right it's a very antagonistic relationship they have with consumers if only they would try some knitting competition yeah maybe there would be more trust and maybe they can unlock the deodorant and i can actually buy deodorant without having to talk to a person with a key if it's a speed knitting competition then you're gonna need it you know this is also did you encounter dish night at the movies no it was like a depression thing let me just look this up quickly okay depression dish night okay dish night at the movies we're looking at this is the international museum of dinnerware design all right here's what the dinnerware museum website says we look fondly back on dish night as a quintessential depression era theater event the giveaway promotions of inexpensive dinnerware were one of the most successful solutions that small town and neighborhood movie theater managers found to bring movie patrons back to empty theaters during the hard times of the great depression the one free to each lady china and glassware campaign is a great way to bring movie patrons back to empty theaters during the hard times of the movie theaters of the 1930s with as much drama elation desire disappointment and anguish as anything that was shown on their silver screens that's incredible you can get a gravy boat with ronald coleman on it i'm seeing these photos really is incredible dish night at the movies people need plates it would work if i please someone give me a movie theater to distribute plates through um all right gabe you have stuff to say thank you for tolerating that derailment no it was a good tangent and it needed to be said people need to hear this need to be said people i know that they're not ready for the truth but i can't help that so all right well to get back to it basically i mean department stores are trying to do what movie theaters are doing at the time and everyone's trying to do in the consumer world is get people through the door get people to pay money so they're trying out all these gimmicks and they're trying to do the most successful gimmick they come up with for department stores is these kind of artificial shopping seasons the only major shopping season at the time is christmas so they basically start looking at the calendar and saying what else can we monetize and this is around the time that valentine's day expands into this massive gift giving occasion you mentioned diamonds but just the association of valentine's day and jewelry starts to become prominent around now what was it like before was it more about cards or flowers cards and it was yeah i think it was less about gift giving in general and more about a day in the calendar to spend together it was a little bit more symbolic mother's day was similar and this is also around the time that mother's day becomes super commercialized but before that it was observed very informally it was just a day where you tell your mother you need to spend a day with her you tell her what she means to you but mother's day becomes so commercialized the inventor of mother's day this woman named anna jarvis she completely disowns the holiday by the 1930s and she spends the rest of her life trying to sue greeting card companies good for her just like the guy who invented k-cups is that right well i don't know that he's sued anybody but i think he's been i should let me just confirm this why don't why do i spend so much time on the show being like i have a vague memory of this thing um yeah k-cup creator john sylvan regrets inventing curate coffee pod system that's the cbc and if you can't trust them then honey i don't know why people have them in their house k-cup inventor says of his device so it's i think it's like that it's like part of this long list of inventors that came to regret their invention yes it's kind of like uh oppenheimer yes oppenheimer the k-cup guy i mean mother's day mother's day these are all on an on a level playing field with each other yeah and it this makes me think of two things one is that if you make valentine's day into a gift giving rather than a quality time holiday um and you know i think you could make the argument that mother's day is is similar um although i guess there's like a emphasis on brunch but also branch ain't cheap then you turn holidays from a reason for people to work less into a reason for people to work more evil yeah this day of the year that should be a stress-free day turns out being more stress more tension and so i mean this is where this big commercialism comes from this big pressure to buy something special and you know you need a diamond the right kind of flowers and this is also around the time that back to school takes off is this big blowout shopping season so department stores start ramping up these big promotional sales for school supplies and clothing and one of the early tactics they use to turn back to school into a shopping season is they give it a mascot oh and the thinking is christmas has santa claus so back to school should also have some kind of recognizable face that children can get excited about and so what some of these stores tried to do and one of the first attempts at making a back-to-school mascot was by jc penny so in 1933 they adopt this cartoon character named scrappy scrappy is this little cheery boy with a really round head and big eyes he looks almost like he could be betty boop's son and scrappy has a dog named yippy boop scrappy boop yeah scrappy and yippy boop scrappy has a dog named yippy who would also sometimes appear in ads with him because every good mascot needs a sidekick and jc penny puts scrappy everywhere in their back-to-school advertising newspaper ads show scrappy cheerfully skipping off to school and the caption would read something like scrappy says come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would list all these depression era bargains like girls cotton slips for 15 cents and boys fancy socks for 10 cents and then scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come see penny's back-to-school values and then underneath scrappy would say come you know and then i go by uh purcell i wonder if people around today that were around during the depression look at scrappy and they think oh man i wish i had those fancy socks for 10 cents again i hope there's still a scrappy fandom was but did you have like an attachment to like i don't know like a mascot character like that i'm trying to think i don't remember being attached to a mascot i remember being attached to the iconography of nickelodeon which was a big blimp a big orange blimp oh yeah yep that was a great blimp i remember wanting that blimp i mean to this day i think orange is my favorite color and i think it has everything to do with a nickelodeon childhood and i never got one of those blimps and they had little blimps right there was like the idea that you could get a blimp somehow maybe yeah those were 100 available and i never got one okay yeah we gotta get you a blimp you gotta get yourself a blimp i'm gonna get myself a blimp or someone has to someone get this man a blimp and i'm gonna get you dishware from the movie theaters yes and then we can work on our campaign to get a movie theater to also give out dishware which would be incredible so but that's the longer game yeah okay so we have our back to school mascots i was thinking for a second that somebody had attempted to make a single back to school character like schooly the school book or something you know but this is this is much better i think i was picturing like the animated dna strand from jurassic park oh yeah i guess scrappy is a little bit like that scrappy was taken from this series of cartoon shorts that i maybe disney made maybe not that were going around in the early 1930s so basically jc penny licensed that character and took them into its own brand oh nice like met life with snoopy yeah and scrappy would often have these low speech bubbles directed toward parents which emphasized thrift and savings you know like thrifty mothers know that pennies is the place and it was only i mean remember it's only a few years earlier that macy's had started holding its annual macy's christmas parade and it was a big holiday hit so jc penny also starts hosting back to school scrappy parades um featuring scrappy costume contests and they gave out prizes and they had costume contests for the for dogs as well who can dress their dog up like yippy so they basically wanted children to get as excited about scrappy as they did about santa hmm i mean that like that's a tall order but i do i don't know i feel like what we've been talking about so far gets back to this idea of like if you want people to embrace something you have to give them something for it like if you want to con us into adopting a new capitalist holiday like you can't just order us to do it like give me a parade give me a plate give me something right you can't just suddenly be like liberty biberty is that anything uh skippity skippity liberty should have done liberty skippity cowards entice me give me a cute animal entice me give me a geico gecko give me a scrappy yeah thrill me to quote tom atkins and night of the creeps so it boost sales as much as they wanted so a few years later jc penny swaps them out for mickey mouse the children of america reject scrap it's also that name is just pretty on the nose for depression era parents right yeah i mean money but everyone's being scrappy right now and you can too although we're living in like around the time we're not too long after um skippy peanut butter is called that i looked this up recently because it's named after a cartoon boy named skippy so it's like it goes the other way too but now skippy the boy has been lost and his peanut butter is all that remains but i think skippy was a bit of a dandy so yeah it's hard to know what's gonna hit did you know also that for a long time canonically and i am not kidding casper the ghost was not a dead little boy he was a ghost because both of his parents were ghosts that's true i didn't know that you I didn't know that ghosts gave birth to ghosts and then isn't that nice to know that in the in the casper universe you can you can pass on and lose your physical body and then you have a little ghost kid that is a beautiful thing yeah but that means casper never really lived which is a sad thing yeah all right uh let's we'll return to this let's put a pin in the casper back to scrappy we'll come back to casper yeah um jc penny swaps them out for depression scrappy they replace them with a new cartoon animal named mickey mouse ever heard of him who was invented only a few years earlier mickey mouse didn't last long either they replaced him with popeye the sailor man and none of these mascots quite reached santa claus level obviously and it was a high turnover rate for this job being a mascot for school is not a good gig i'd say but nevertheless all these ads you know they did help forge this new american shop tradition and it quickly became the biggest retail season after christmas in the mid 30s and really back to school this season wouldn't have happened without two things one was the depression you know of course which created this need for a shopping season and the second was the department store itself which was this relatively novel thing at the time and i just want to take a step back and talk about department stores for a minute because they do have an interesting history and it's hard for us now to appreciate the novelty of the department store and the of the one-stop shop you know everything under one roof yeah i think that probably we could appreciate that novelty all over again uh i'm ready but yeah what was that like i mean instead of going to this this store to get pencils and that store to get hats and that store to buy shoes you would go to a department store and get everything at once and we did have outdoor markets and bazaars which had been around for centuries and merchants would get them and they would get and they would sell various goods and wares but the department store it moves this concept indoors and markets it to upper classes you know they had chandeliers and marble staircases and these department stores start popping up in the mid-1800s in new york and london and paris the first big one in new york is called a.t stewart marble dry goods palace which opens in 1846 oh dry goods palace i macy's opens up then lord and taylor and bloomingdale's all of them within a few blocks of each other in new york and it starts to change the way people shop because shopping now becomes a kind of leisure activity for the upper class you could go to the store and spend an entire day there just browsing and wandering i mean if you add a food court and move it to the suburbs it's basically a mall and actually by today's standards like the first department stores they were relatively small one floor some were three floors but really five floors was about the limit for buildings at the time because that was about as high as anyone would want to walk upstairs then uh this man named elisha otis comes along he's this factory worker from vermont and in 1852 he's trying to figure out a safe way to transport heavy materials and equipment to upper floors in his factory and the standard method at this time was basically like a large dumbwaiter you place the materials on a wooden platform you place the materials on a wooden platform you place the materials on a wooden platform you use pulleys to hoist it up but factory materials were extremely heavy and these pulleys and ropes would snap all the time it was very unreliable so elisha otis invents this safety break which means if the hoisting rope snaps the platform doesn't fall the ropes catch onto these metal gear teeth and the whole contraption just automatically comes to a halt and so what this invention does it not only makes it safer to hoist heavy equipment up and down a building but it makes it safe now to hoist people up and down which is basically the invention of the passenger elevator so otis patents it he founds the otis elevator company which is still around and buildings all over new york begin installing otis's passenger elevators and the public is just blown away i mean people are riding these elevators to the tops of buildings only to ride them back down and then back up again like it's an amusement ride tourists are making special trips to new york just for the elevators there's this one british visitor in the 1860s he writes home to his family i just rode on a vertical railroad oh that would be pretty fun so it totally reshapes how people think of buildings and cities and urban living it basically allows cities to grow vertically now before this cities would only grow outward horizontally which meant they were constrained by how much land there was but now the elevator removes that constraint now you can start stacking the city on top of itself and department stores are among the first buildings to take advantage of this and they become some of the world's first skyscrapers wow yeah so it's just the technology that sort of builds the world we live in as it seems like sort of being created day by day kind of stacking up like inventions stacking onto each other to make these places possible right and so once shoppers are comfortable riding to upper floors retailers could start stacking up the city on top of themselves stock far more merchandise they can grow their department stores so macy's by 1924 it has 20 floors and lord and taylor 11 and it used to be that department stores might have one floor for women and another floor for men but now they can have a whole floor just for women's shoes and another floor just for women's handbags and another store another floor just for men's ties you know the taller these department stores grew the more granular each department becomes yeah i mean that is like a really interesting thing about consumer goods and and stuff you know is that it's not that we have to build spaces big enough to house the things that we need it's that we build bigger spaces and then we need more things to fill them and i feel like that's true both in a personal dwelling sense and in a commerce sense you know it's like if you if you build it if you build it ladies gloves will come if you build it we will stock and they will buy yeah exactly and that is like a really interesting thing about consumer goods and stuff you know is that it's not that one of the interesting things about how shopping has kind of broken down in the past 10 years like one of the things that i really miss from the pre-covid world is um the 24-hour walmart experience you know that was just like we're not gonna get that back probably and also and then like on on kind of an opposite note because walmart and target are kind of like slowly merging in a very interesting way because walmart used to be sort of like walmart was being created and recreated in front of you but it was always there and you could always get into it and you could always sleep in the parking lot and target was like this much more sedate experience where like you would come and all of the aisles would be like totally stocked and it would be just like very well maintained and like a pretty relaxing experience you know and now it's like it's not that it's non-relaxing or like i don't know it's not like it's super stressful or anything but there's like there's a lot of stuff that's going on and there's a lot of stuff that's going on and there's a lot there's not enough people working registers there's you can people are getting stressed about getting their stuff rung up there's people restocking stuff all the time because they've cut you know they cut stuff and then didn't rehire um and so have this sort of like you know just like cutting corners on corners on corners and just sort of like having to maintain the illusion of the sort of constantly available beautifully arranged products like having to be showing you the backstage action all the time all the time which i would argue a big part of the american shopping experience is like agreeing that you want the discount and you're gonna go into the backstage area or like the basement or whatever and like get the slightly soiled stuff although we don't we're not as up front about that now or that like you want the illusion but now i feel like there's this sort of like crisis in american like in-person shopping where it's like you're paying illusion prices for you know and like look it's not the greatest crisis facing us but it's an interesting one it is interesting to see how american retail ebbs and flows through different eras three different generations and these things that you grow up expecting or assuming to be just the regular flow of things the regular way that things work in stores yeah turns out one tiny little global pandemic shifts everything right or just the this or you know the decline of the department store before that and yeah you know the various reasons behind it but but the more you're talking about it the more it's like right like the point of the department store like there's a lot of different things about it but one was that it was kind of shopping theater and that people were like playing these roles you know and you would have also you know like the cosmetics and the perfume areas and people whose job it is to sort of like they're not just sales people they're like consultants and they're here to help you transform and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and find the tools that you need to like conquer this next phase of your life and just like you know this it being like performing a role in in this kind of customer facing world and that being something that doesn't exist the way that it used to and it being just very interesting to think about how we created that world and then sort of gave up on it at a certain point and if you think of walmart and department stores as being theatrical like they're putting on a show for you then you can also think of these individual shopping seasons as just another theater show you know this time it's christmas yeah running through december 26th come see the christmas show and now it's back to school running through september 12th and i mean keep in mind during the depression when they're experimenting with all these artificial new shopping seasons the concept of a shopping season hadn't really been created yet there were seasonal trends people shopped more around christmas but for the most part americans went shopping as needed but i think that starts to change in the late 1800s you know the world is becoming increasingly industrialized everything is being mass produced and now you also have these new shopping centers in the sky and this is when you start to see the the seeds of these new hyper commercialized shopping seasons of course it starts with christmas in 1874 macy's installs this enormous christmas window display with thousands of dollars worth of decorations apparently most of it is porcelain dolls it's a little creepy but then other stores start copying macy's they do their own big window displays and then these windows kind of become attractions in themselves they're like the opening curtain of the theater production or or they're they're the theater production in itself it's like sax fifth avenue some people go to that just to look through the glass and then in 1879 edison invents the light bulb and we start getting christmas like this and then we start getting displays now department stores are all about christmas lights then in the 1890s department stores start hiring santa clauses which were originally just these roving breeders that walked around in red suits talking to children and you can see where it's all going so by the 1900s macy's and gimbels start putting on huge christmas parades and so by the 1920s the christmas shopping season is pretty established it's pretty much what it is today with parades and men in red suits and they're all going to be going to the parades and they're all going to be going to the christmas parades and they're all going to be going to the They would stay up for a few weeks and then go away. It was kind of like, like spirit Halloween, but for notebooks and pens. And they called these pop-ups college shops because they mostly catered to older teens and college students. And in addition to school supplies, they sold casual clothing like sweaters and tennis shoes. And these shops, they often set up these big cardboard displays, which would feature chalkboards and pencils and writing desks and all this back to school iconography that we're now so used to seeing. It was basically their version of Christmas decorations. And they would entice people to college shops by offering things like free Roomba lessons and free Coca-Cola, the non-cocaine kind. I mean, it was gimmicks upon gimmicks to get people into stores. Yeah. And again, it's like if you want to sit. If you want to seduce me, don't just yell at me that I need to be seduced, you know? Give me some free stuff. Good cocaine. Yeah. Or, you know, or at least a soda. Yeah. Because it's like, I mean, do you ever like sign up for a rewards program now, you know? And they're like, well, for every $100,000 you spend, we're going to give you 35 cents off a welcome amenity. And you're like, well, thank God. I'm ashamed to say I signed up for one yesterday. Look, I'm signed up for all. All of them. If I can get a little bit of a boost, I will. But it's a little bit insulting, you know, when they're like, if you fly across the country 25 times, we'll give you a cookie. But you also have to sign up for text messages and email notifications. So three times a day while you're eating your cookie, that one cookie, we're going to remind you. Yeah. That'd be amazing. Like, what would the 1930s version of that be? Where, like, you look at a jacket, you know, in an apartment store, you don't buy it. You maybe pick it up for a second, but then you put it back. And then every morning at 9 a.m., a salesperson is knocking on your door like, hello? Do you want to look at this jacket again? You should really buy this jacket. And you're like, no, go away. And then every morning, I mean, that's like. But it's 40% off if you order now. Yeah. But like, I don't know if it would be totally psycho to do it in real life. Maybe you shouldn't do it online, even as a retailer. Anyway, that's my thought. I guess I cannot. I cannot go on in this world where, like, you consider buying a product and then you get an email about it every day for the rest of your life. Or where you buy a product and then they email you every day as well. And you're like, listen, I do not buy slippers every week of my life. If I bought slippers from you, then I need to hear from you in three to four years. Please don't email me until then. Okay. So we were being seduced. We're being seduced into having a new season of spending a lot of money on stuff. And is it working? It is. It gets us through the depression. It gets department stores through the depression. Then America enters World War II. The clothes in these shops start to change. a bit these college shops start to have you know instead of casual baggy sweaters now it's denim overalls and blue jeans and more practical durable items and the chalkboard displays they start to change to women practicing morse code and working in factories it's very rosy the riveter good time for denim i guess it's good time for denim and the selling point for these clothes becomes durability rather than thrift which is what scrappy was selling because materials like wool and silk and nylon they're all being used for the war effort there's shortages so the buzzwords for these clothes become things like tough sturdy built to last yeah which is nuance that would would be lost on me i think without you explaining that but of course there there is like a difference between like depression thriftiness and wartime thriftiness where it's like well i just buy these like really cheap plastic clothes and then i'm like oh my god i don't know what to do with this plastic clothes and then i'm like oh my god i don't know what to do with this plastic clothes plastic sandals and then when they wear out you can get another pair and now it's like oh no we're using all of that stuff if you're gonna buy something you're gonna have to use it for a long time yeah which you know i realize it's not all that cut and dried but just kind of yeah the way that it's like you're not just being thrifty on a household level but you're contributing to this sort of nationwide austerity program right they're figuring out a way to make back-to-school shopping feel like this patriotic act and they're also renaming back-to-school clothing with these patriotic names you know in a set of pants they're calling them victory slacks and skirts are victory skirts it's very much freedom fries during the iraq war yeah although i mean i i fail to see how a skirt specifically could contribute to victory but you never know you never know and again this works the strategy works department stores survive this wartime austerity just as they survive the depression and it's really thanks to these shopping seasons that they're promoting and then after the war of course the 50s the american economy starts booming and jobs come back incomes go up and there's a massive baby boom which means there's a lot of new toddlers running around and they all need clothes every 25 minutes yeah and now americans actually do have money to spend and retailers start pivoting away from basic back-to-school essentials like books and pens and they start you know pivoting toward cool fun trendy products and in the 50s there's a cool fun trendy product that takes over the market do you want to guess what that is oh my gosh and it's like school supply is it a school supply it is huh okay is it pens it's not i know that ballpoint pens are relatively but they're older than that okay um i'll give you a hint this is something it is not used in the process of doing school work but it's used in the process of a break during school a break is it the hula hoop is it is it candy cigarettes a break during school okay uh okay i'm gonna do one more guess i am not gonna get it um is it the automobile no that's not it okay what is it i'm it's the school lunchbox oh my god yes the lunchbox wow such an important tool for self-expression do you remember having a a trinity school lunchbox oh yeah what did you have well and we were and i didn't i don't remember having anything with a character on it because i had school like lunch boxes or lunch containers in the you know like early to mid 90s when it was like soft thermal containers in like bold block colors were like the thing yeah without any particular theming that i can remember did you have a cool lunchbox i remember having a teenage mutant ninja turtles lunchbox i remember having a captain planet lunchbox and then i remember outgrowing the cartoon lunchboxes really quickly i think by maybe second grade i was already on to like the dark blue soft vinyl lunchbox that was dark blue soft vinyl is very me yeah yeah the soft vinyl lunchboxes of the 90s it's also very hard to commit to identifying with a character for that long yeah you know i mean that's that's another part of the retail genius of this idea is that you outgrow a trend every year yeah you're into barney when you're six and by seven you wouldn't be caught dead with a barney lunchbox so it really creates this turnover again they're not selling a tin lunchbox that's designed to last you 12 years they're designing something that i mean it's supposed to be obvious but it's not it's supposed to be obvious as soon as you grow out of it so the reason these are coming about in the 50s television is pretty new there's a lot of cross-branding and you know so by the 50s kids could get a superman lunchbox or a roy rogers lunchbox or mickey mouse or snoopy and then they realize this is such a great selling point they start putting these characters onto notebooks and folders that's where you get your lisa frank you know a few decades later they even put some of these characters onto dictionaries nice so fun fact i actually own one of these dictionaries it's a barbie pocket dictionary from 1959 it has this red vinyl cover with a blonde woman on the front and all these sparkles and stars around her head and it says barbie dictionary at the top i know i'm very cool that is very cool then by the 60s everything shifts to space themes because you know sputnik and the apollo missions so now lunchboxes are filled with rockets and planets and so again back to school is becoming less about buying necessities and more about just buying the cool new branded thing it's no longer i need pencils i need notebooks i need a ruler now it's i want a star trek notebook and i want a batman ruler and i want a beatles lunchbox right and i still do want a beatles lunchbox by the way if anyone is listening well yeah yeah that would be nice i would like it a uh remains of the day lunchbox i feel like that was is that the one and waiting for guffman i think so and then it's what's also interesting is that and i don't i'm not being entirely negative about this right because i think one of the reasons that shopping works is because it's fun and because we like to acquire objects you know not just because we've been duped or because it's you know maladjustment or greed or whatever but because on some level you know on some like most basic of all levels we're not going to be able to buy anything because we're not going to be able to buy anything things are fun and nice to have and also we understand also that we need to collect and save them as sort of a survival thing it doesn't really serve us in a lot of the ways that we do it now but like i don't know i guess i don't want to come off as against stuff i love stuff i'm also aware that i have too much stuff and it's controlling my life a little bit more than it should be and so i'm in like a passive-aggressive war with my stuff but i also want more of it um but it's there's something like and there's like right now i'm like i'm not going to be able to buy anything because i'm not it cuts both ways where like a lunchbox is now no longer something that's like you know made of tin or some like extremely well i guess plastic also lasts forever famously but something that is supposed to like be in your family and be passed down to other siblings and then to other generations and instead that your lunchbox gets to be something that is extremely personal to you that you're using as a tool of your own self-expression and like might become a hand-me-down or something or that you know might end up owned by someone else or something like that so i'm not going to be able to buy a child or used by a child but like doesn't really have that intention behind it right it is chosen it's picked by you to represent you it represents your taste your interests yeah something maybe integral about your character i mean as a child where you have very little agency this is one of the things you can have agency about how you represent yourself to your friends via you know if it's cartoons or if it's just the color of a binder you are making this choice and next year you you might feel embarrassed by last year's choices but that's kind of the almost the point almost the point at least as far as i mean it's a great sell from retailers that they're selling you stuff as identity rather than yeah something more personal and they're selling you yourself like they actually have you back behind the counter and they're gonna sell you back to you right and then they're gonna sell a different version of you back to you and then that'll continue until you just have you know 30 lunchbox hand-me-downs that go into um a goodwill store or a dumpster it's i guess that's what that's the kind of consumerism the kind of shallow consumerism that a lot of people withdraw from when they think of holidays when they think of what does christmas mean to me what does mother's day mean to me it doesn't mean the revolving door of stuff i mean to some people it does but i mean when you get down to it the back-to-school is about quick retail or what do they call it fast fast fast fashion fast fashion that's exactly it so that's what starts happening in the 60s yeah where your body is a brief middle ground between an object's manufacturer and its long tenure in a chilean desert or whatever and that's what yeah that's what starts happening in the in the 60s when back-to-school shopping becomes less about necessity more about desire more about desire and identity and then in the 70s that's when we get malls and the suburbs are expanding and malls are becoming these fixtures of suburban life and the The mall is a counterpart to the department store, but it's different in a bunch of ways. Namely, it skews a bit younger. It's also more of a social space. You can walk around with your friends. You can browse stores. Teens can feel more independent there. It's no longer, I'm going to the store with mom to buy pencils. Now it's, I'm going to the mall with my friends to look at clothes and try on shoes and talk about boys and maybe eat a soft pretzel. More and more, back-to-school shopping becomes about teen styles and teen fashion and teenager independence in the 70s. Malls start staging September fashion shows to show off that year's back-to-school looks. Stores are increasingly selling the first day of school as this opportunity for reinvention. It's the classic new year, new you strategy. Then in the 80s, back-to-school marketing starts making its way onto television. Suddenly there are all these back-to-school TV commercials. So I want to play a few of these for you, mostly because old commercials are just such incredible time capsules, and I really enjoy watching them. Hey everybody, have you heard the news? There's a back-to-school sale at Payless for you. Yeah, they got what you need for the summer. And like pencils and notebooks, crayons and pens, watercolors, booklets, suit socks and shoes, scissors and erasers, anything you choose. Lunchboxes, pencil boxes, notepad paper, glue, typewriters, calculators, tape recorders too. Even got a scooter. Got a scooter. You gotta get the best. You gotta get a scooter. Oh, this is totally nasty boys. Oh, you nasty boys. Oh my God. Well, that was great. That was a bop. I loved that. I have to go buy a scooter right now. I mean, they're basically, it's the same thing they were doing with all the mascots. They were just looking at what is cool with kids and using it to sell. Paper. But like seven-year-old boys love Janet Jackson, right? It's like. Clearly. Yeah. Okay. So the next ad is similar. It kind of follows the same formula. Rap is obviously very big at the time. So this one is from 1990. Very nice. Got to be here. Got to look cool. New York, L.A. Jamming in the heart. What we're saying. To him. So cool. DoorDash. Bugle boy. I'm going to tell you why. Lee. Bump and spin and jump and. The original Arizona. Wow. Thanks, JCPenney, for making me who I am. Yeah. What you going to do, JCPenney? I'm out of here. Wow. And there is just like, there's something eternal about ads, I feel like, that we really were good at. And about this time of like, it doesn't matter what you're advertising as long as you show young people happily enjoying it. Enjoying it together or even better enjoying themselves generally while incidentally holding or eating or wearing the thing. And people will get it. I think it's the same tactic they use now. Like the product becomes incidental to the images you're seeing. You're seeing happy people. Right. Or you're seeing like a 30 second tear jerking story. And then at the end, you find out it's for a Subaru. And you didn't see it coming. Yeah. It has nothing to do with the car. But yeah. And also. So then we've kind of gone full influencer marketing, I think, in many ways. And so it's like, if you see someone who's like, apparently really happy and rich and living this lifestyle of abundance, like, you know, drinking a certain energy drink, then like, that's the one part of their lifestyle that you can afford to emulate. And like, maybe it'll work if you get that energy drink. Yeah. All right. This last ad is from 1996. And just a disclaimer, I know a lot of 90s kids may be re-traumatized. When they hear this one. But I want to play it just to show how even in the 90s, retailers are still trying to link back to school with Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of the year. I remember this one. They're going back. It's back to school time. See, it's good to make ads for the parents because they're the ones who are driving to these places. We have a happy dad cavorting about while his kids stand miserably in a Staples. It's a look. We're being we're being honest here. And I appreciate that. Yeah. Maybe ads are becoming a little bit more honest at this point. Maybe they're getting a little bit of the the gimbals. Let's be truthful to everyone about our products kind of strategy going. I know you're not happy that school is starting again. These kids are. We're in despair, but we're we're telling you what time of year it is. We're telling you what you need and maybe you'll trust us more for it. This also reminds me that baby Leonardo DiCaprio is in an ad for Fred Meyer clothes in the eighties. Have you ever seen that one? No, I haven't. I was going to do one. OK, so this is not back to school shopping. He needs a nice sweater for the school dance. But, you know, OK. Hey, honey, how's school? OK. Hey, mom, I think I can get some new clothes. Any special reason? It's just a dumb school game. Come on. It's just a dumb school dance. Go on after me. No way. Hi. Want a dance? Sure. I like your sweater. He likes a sweater at work. You'll find me a baby. That works. I want that sweater now. Yeah, I mean, I want to dance with the girl. Look, that's what her works. That's what it is out there somewhere. Yeah, she likes the sweater. Yeah, that's all it took. And he and he knew that that was what he needed. He was like, Mom, we got to go to Fred Meyer. I got to get a sweater. I will say I have a friend who relocated to Portland from California who has remarked many times that she finds it incredibly weird that Fred Meyer, which if you don't know, is a big grocery store with a bunch of other sections, has a jewelry department, has a little jewelry store in it when you come in, which is just something that's normal to me, much like bikini coffee. And recently I had the divine pleasure of her texting our group chat and saying, does anyone know where I can get a new battery for a watch? And I said, Fred Meyer Jewelers. OK, so you know what is nice about this, too, is that much like with Christmas, we can market to both kids. And adults because kids demand stuff and adults are the ones who control the money that gets it for them. But also you can get the kids to work on the parents. Yeah, it's manipulative on many levels. You market to the kid. You tell your kids, go ask your parents. You tell the parents, just so you know, they're about to manipulate you. So figure out your answer. Get ready for it. And just just get them the sweater. Get them the sweater. Do you want your son to be an? And so get him the sweater. Or do you want him to be the biggest movie star in Hollywood history? Get him the sweater. Yeah. All right. So the 70s becomes very fashion heavy with back to school and becomes very teenager targeted. This has a lot to do with with who's watching TV, who's going to malls. And in the 80s, it starts to shift again away from wardrobes and toward electronics. So one of the first big trends. The back to school gadgets of the 80s was something called the spelling ace. And yes, I know it wouldn't be a Gabe Henry episode if I didn't talk about spelling. Yeah. Thank God. So the spelling ace was this little pocket computer spell checker. It was about the size of a calculator. And if you didn't know how to spell a word, you would type it out as phonetically as possible. And it would spit out the correct spelling. So, like, let's say you were trying to spell the word giraffe. You could type in. And it would be like, did you mean giraffe? And it would give you the spelling. Yeah, I would like to have that. Actually, I looked it up on eBay. I could get you one for about 15 bucks. All right. Nice. It becomes one of the biggest selling back to school products of the late 80s. It also came with games like hangman and anagrams, which means it was also one of the first handheld devices that students could sneak into class and play under their desk. So the spelling ace opens up this new category of back to school shopping, which is electronics. And after the spelling ace, the hot item becomes the graphing calculator, some of which also came with games. So there's I think there's a theme building here. Like, you can see where smartphones come from. It's this handheld device that can do a lot of good things for you, but can also waste a lot of time. And then personal computers start showing up in back to school advertising, laptops and tablets. And since then, everything's really been moving. Moving toward electronic and digital, which I mean, it's good for retailers and it's bad for retailers. It's good because electronics cost a lot of money and stores famously love money. It's their main love language. But I guess it's also bad because the more that technology grows, the more obsolete stores like Macy's and JCPenney become. I mean, most people do their shopping online now and physical stores are closing left and right. As I have been complaining. complaining about. Yeah, which I guess that's the last bittersweet note. You know, these big multi-story department stores that helped create back to school and helped create Christmas and Valentine's and all these other consumer rhythms that we're used to, you know, really the entire American shopping calendar, you know, they're all disappearing because the culture of retail they created, it just gradually stopped needing them. Yeah. Right. And then it's like, we have this cultural idea that definitely is still, you know, a big part of commerce, but we're like the places that you go and the sort of inducements to sort of make a season of it aren't there anymore. And so we're just sort of expected to keep returning to the same thing out of habit. And I guess, of course, the kids do need clothes and pencils and stuff, but yeah, this, this moved toward maybe like bigger ticket items when in the past it was really like, you know, you would definitely, I'm sure spend a lot more than you would like to on school support. But it would break down into a lot of small stuff, you know, and that maybe we're having moving in a very different direction now, but what is the, does this make you feel differently about just kind of the season generally in your memories of it, knowing, knowing everything that you do about how it was created? I still have nostalgic, fond memories of early September. I mean, bittersweet again, because I hated school, but I do love transition periods, transition seasons in general. And I do remember liking walking through the aisles and looking at the different things I could be this year in school. And it doesn't change it for me. I think it's my experience is separate from the experience, the consumer push to basically just sell us products. And I, even though it came out of this like hyper, consumerist, hyper capitalist idea of just selling us cheaper and cheaper, more and more mass produced things. I mean, my experience is still my own. And I prize that memory of owning that blue vinyl lunchbox, even if it's in a dumpster somewhere. Right. So I think it's the same thing I feel about, let's say Christmas, which is super commercialized, but I still love it for the memories and the traditions I have separate from the way it's pushed away. Yeah. And I think it's maybe part of existing in a, not just a consumer culture, but a material world is figuring out where the line is and not trying to be a purist because that's not going to work. You feel like you get to decide what you're saying no to, you know, where like you allow yourself these sort of cheap pleasures that I think it's not wrong to need in order to get through the day and process. The information that we have about living in the world, but also to sort of feel secure that you're maybe not going along with every trend out of the hope that this one is the one that's going to work out and give you the feelings that you're promised. Maybe that's kind of how I feel about consumerism lately is that like we're given these promises of the way that goods and services are supposed to make us feel. And the truth is that those feelings are fleeting. And so we get to decide what our needs are and what works best for us and not listen so much when we're told that the thing that we're going to buy next is going to be the antidote to this feeling of sinking uncertainty. And maybe it's also because as adults, I think our lives are dictated less by seasonal shifts. Yeah. Besides weather shifts. And besides the. Whole new year, new you aspect of New Year's Eve. We don't have, or at least in my life, I don't have too many fresh starts throughout the year. It's just a 12 month, 12 months straight through. And I don't have a season based around September about starting somewhere fresh and meeting new people. It flows more. And I think because as a kid, you have very little agency around your life. Your life is really structured about seasons of the year, seasons of school, winter break, summer break. And therefore you're like, you have these markers throughout the year that signify starting new, looking different and becoming a new person. Yeah. I don't remember the last time I went browsing in a store and thought, who can I be this year? I just remember thinking, how can I dress to feel and look like myself? But as a kid, you're still figuring that out. Right. Yeah. And maybe it's, on the one hand, it's nice to kind of have reached the point where you feel like, you know, who you are and what stuff calls to you in that way. And on the other hand, it's, it's nice to not get too limited in that and to kind of have those moments of being like, well, maybe this doesn't feel like a me thing, but maybe I can be the person I am when I have this hat on, which is why we love to buy stuff to wear on vacation. That then when you come home, you're like, what am I going to do with this? Yeah. I don't know. I think there's something just like very quintessentially American about us loving the romance of a fresh start and sort of turning that into like this very well exploited capitalist holiday that we certainly are still living in, in some version of every year, but that maybe we've taken the cultural feeling or like the emotional part of it as like the more lasting thing, you know, like I'm sure people are still shelling out plenty of money for school supplies. In fact, far too much. I just bet. But, but like the feeling of like the need for the school supplies and the fact that like everything can start all over and start fresh again for you just, you know, because you have this brand new eraser. I mean, there's something quintessentially American about the idea of reinventing yourself. You can be anything you'd like to be. There's a kind of a pioneering instinct of just, if we go westward, we'll discover a new land, we'll be getting new people. There's always something mysterious around the corner. We can create whoever, whatever version of ourselves we want to be. We're not stuck with the traditions and the rituals of previous generations. We can create our own. We could pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, which are now 40% off at JCPenney. And if anyone gets in our way, we'll kill them and take all their stuff. Cause we're Americans. Yeah. There's like the, the way that we're steeped in sort of like a new beginning, even at the cost of someone else. And so there's, you know, this like really sinister side of, of that. And also this very back to school-y side of it, I guess, you know, you're a, we're a nation of con men and you're always only one brand new eraser away from a new life. Gabe, tell us about, what have you written lately that we can read? So I'm, I'm working on a new book, which there will be news about that. Hopefully soon. I'm in the early stages where I don't like to talk about it because then I get superstitious. If I tell someone what I'm working on, then all of a sudden I've put that idea out into the ether, it floats up into the sky. And then someone else can pick it out of the sky and write it better and faster than I can. Yeah. Well, listen, I believe that the pandemic happened in early 2020 because too many people at the same moment thought this is going to be my year and that's, that's how that happened. I, so I support your superstition. We had reached peak threshold of hopeful writing projects and then the universe just sent us all backward. Or just hopeful everything. Too many people were trying for a fresh start at once. And we got it. I think I try so hard to be skeptical. Yeah. I'm skeptical because deep down I am the most superstitious person who's ever lived. But anyway. I would love to hear more about your superstitions at a future point. Well, it's like, you know, I read license plates. If I see like certain state license plates or like certain words on like a long drive recur or like numbers recurring, you know, like that's something I kind of pay attention to. I pay attention to it more when I'm stressed and feeling out of control of my life. Interestingly. Or just, you know, the thing of like, like if you're thinking a word and someone says it and something you're watching at that same moment, or if you read something at the same moment that someone says it unrelatedly, or these sort of these little sort of hinky moments that you experience, like I completed an adult skating course and had like an adult one sticker that I put on the inside of my wallet. And I still have it, even though it's like all the writing has rubbed off of it completely because I simply must have it. I don't know. It's like, it's, it's linked with being an incurable pack rat as well, but it's just, I don't know. I just think that if I hang onto enough garbage, then nothing bad will happen to me. Is that so wrong? I don't think that's wrong. Do you know that I've been keeping receipts and old Metro cards in my top sock drawer since I was about nine. See, and that's a great collection. I have receipts from pharmacies that no longer exist receipts that say toothpaste, toothpaste, $1.50. And it's so faded at this point, but I can see the date and I can remember, oh, I bought this on my way home from school in seventh grade. Yeah. Right. It's like a mnemonic for the rest of your life and yeah when i find those things i always feel so happy i bought a book recently that like the person who had been reading it this is a copy of the book funny money which is about a bank collapsing in oklahoma and the guy had been reading it had like a note from like the front desk at a hotel it was like the laguardia marriott or something like that saying like his friends would meet him at like this bar at this address and then like i think um a currency exchange receipt from like an airport in montreal and like something from la and like a boarding pass or something from another it was like pieces of like mid 80s paper ephemera from like airlines and airports and stuff that just like were sort of placed in this book because presumably he'd sort of been reading it throughout his travel travels but it was just like what a thrill i really loved it so hopefully i'm not just imposing all this trash on other people and they get to enjoy it someday too sometimes i open a book and i find an old paper bus transfer from when i was reading that book in 2007 and that's nice because paper bus transfers don't exist anymore in portland and it's like one day they were gone and we just kind of didn't ever really pay that much attention to them and so it's only if they're sort of sticking around in a book somewhere or somebody saved them for some reason that we would have any recollection of them i don't know yeah i'm very moved by tiny inanimate objects i guess is my point i am too i am too and to bring this back to christmas i've been giving my sister this christmas gift every year it's i'll find some kind of scrap of paper that represents some kind of experience we had during that year she and i may be a receipt from a restaurant that we went to as a family on vacation and i'll keep that receipt put it in my pocket and then for christmas i'll frame it in this little like four inch by four inch wood frame and it's just this little beautiful bit of family ephemera that then can go on a wall or go wherever but it's because it has this frame around it it has that much more significance right and the rest of our scraps of paper of our lives get thrown away for sure right but you keep one and it's like keeping one little uh memory not to get too sappy but it is a a special christmas gift that that costs about 15 and it means a lot it's a high sap show you know yeah and then also it's like right and that's the thing too we're buying something as such a fraud activity now because so many objects are brought into your life without your consent anyway just through like random you know clutter and ephemera and so just kind of i don't know choosing to elevate some of that into something special i like that too yes and that is our episode thank you to the people who helped make this show miranda zickler is our producer and editor and nicole ortiz is our administrative assistant we'll see you in two weeks you can find us on twitter and facebook at miranda zickler and you can find us on facebook at miranda zickler and we'll see you in two weeks