Oh, my. So much of that was true for us over here in SoCal, except for names of things, and boys in shorts. Boys never wore shorts here, ever, except to play basketball. No fountain pens--those were for rich people. We wrote in pencil, with ballpoint pens for very special papers. They were handed out and then collected again. The special paper (white lined) was also rare--most of our work was done on lined newsprint.

The spouse was born before they stopped trying to force lefties to write right. But he only had a year of it, then they gave up. His leftie hook is so pronounced that he writes sideways up a paper, almost backward.