Just this morning I was (inner) lamenting the fact that my children will not likely be off to school with an armload of records. Even an armload of CDs isn't/wasn't the same. Nowadays its all about the vessel. The device is more important than the content. Having a the latest iPod is FAR more important than having the latest band/artist/album. What a dirty damned shame.

I remember doing just that in 1979. I borrowed, and proudly strutted, a friend's copy of Cat Scratch Fever. Consequently, jumped off the school bus to hand it back to him and the wax spun out and hit the pavement. Gouged. Dead. I might have well torn the doors off of his parents car or burned his garage down. We were never the same friends after that.

That same bus also carried a few high school students. I recall two in particular. They wore jean jackets, dirty long hair (looking more like professional hockey players than suburban kids) smelled like cigarettes...and just as vivid as I remember those fellas, I remember thier copies of both Cheap Trick's In Color... and Aerosmith Night in the Ruts. They were totally unaware of their influence...surely don't rembember me peering over the seatback with eyes like dinner plates.

I couldn't WAIT to get older.
I still can't.

Oh yes I certainly remember this. It was 1973 and the preferred method of album transportation was in front of a briefcase carried at 45 degrees across the chest. The progressives proudly sporting Yes, Gentle Giant, ELP and the Floyd. The heavy mob with Zeppelin and Sabbath. The traditionalists with the Beatles and the Stones and the day I decided to brave the ridicule and display my copy of Aladdin Sane.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the insert bearing the legend "I love you David" hadn't fallen out on my way to Chemistry.
However the novelty of calling me a poof (it was the seventies, we did things differently then) soon wore off and I was accepted as part of the record displaying elite, particularly on the acquisition of the first Velvets album which carried some kudos.
In those simpler times the displaying of sleeves was also a good way of gaining an introduction to other types of music. If the coolest guy in the school likes Jimi Hendrix then it had to be worth a punt of my pocket money.Mind you taking Electric Ladyland in did result in a temporary ban on the practice as the cover was deemed inappropriate.

I recall as a callow youth I would leave certain books lying around like beacons to my huge intellect and sensitvity.
I especially recall 'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac which I have not managed to finish to this day and as mentioned a few posts below by Paul 'Catcher In The Rye' which I did manage to finish (which I admired more than enjoyed).

This sort of thing still happens as adults. Carrying The Guardian under your arm is no different.

same with books that I used to get from the local library. One was a Karl Marx book that I never read!! I remember a guy in the 80s that used to walk around clutching a Balaam And The Angel lp to his chest!

Fopp's bags were - and still are - transparent, so back in the old days when I would wander over to their Edinburgh Cockburn Street shop to pick up that week's Melody Maker recommendations, I'd carry them home in a big see-through carrier bag so that everyone could see how cool I was. Or how thirled to second-rate indie bands.

those of the next lot to be bought; the ones I had borrowed for a good listen before I spent my limited cash.

When I listened mostly to the Moodies, the borrowed LPs I carried and flaunted were Gnidrolog or King Crimson. Then when I'd bought those for myself, I coveted, borrowed and preened with the gatefolds from Joe Walsh or the Allmans. Having secured a collector's toe-hold on the American greats, my pretensions turned to anything on Blue Note.

I seem to have always had a burning desire to consume more and more music, the more challenging or exotic the better, and I've always had a bank balance that's at least fifty titles short of enough.

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures under one arm

Nietzsche's Ecce Homo tooked in the pocket, title visible to the world.

And a large thimble of pernod & blackcurrant.

That for me is 1979.

Thank God I discovered Orange Juice

it was part of my school uniform as far as I was concerned:
navy blue duffle coat
white shirt
school tie (at rakish angle)
white t
M&S pants
Wranglers™
white cotton socks
desert boots
Genesis Live (in a clear plastic cover that cost 15p from the record shop)