CHANGE YOUR UNDERWEAR TWICE A WEEK: LESSONS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF CLASSROOM FILMSTRIPS, by Danny Gregory, Artisan, softbound, 213 pages, $18.95.

If baby boomers would like to be zapped in an instant back to their elementary-school years, "Change Your Underwear Twice a Week," by Danny Gregory," is the book to do it.

Filled with pictures and text from actual filmstrips shown in the public schools in the decades following World War II, the book is both funny and wise. Most of us have forgotten those filmstrip projectors, usually set up on a student's desk in preparation for a story with a message: how to feel safe, how to tow the line with authorities, how to get excited about the moon and outer space.

Some of the strips were practical — such as going to the dentist, riding a bicycle safely, using proper telephone manners.

One much-used filmstrip was a tutorial about starting school. It shows a picture of a little boy waking up. "Today was going to be my first day at school. I wondered what it would be like." He gets dressed, eats breakfast, rides to school, meets his teacher and gets to know the other kids — all in 17 separate still shots. Finally, the last picture shows all the kids resting on the floor on their individual mats.

In a filmstrip that could be called "Billy Gets Irradiated," the script teaches children about going to Dr. Brown for a check-up. Billy watches his friend during his check-up and starts to feel less nervous about his own examination. There is one very disturbing part, however. Billy stands in a fluoroscope, which, as late as the 1970s was a regular part of a child's visit to the doctor. He stands against an X-ray machine and radiation passes through his body and is projected onto a fluorescent screen, with an image that was a live, moving picture. The doctor put on a lead apron while other children waiting their turn stood around unprotected.

Another strip was "I Want to Be a Policeman" — which tells of Larry, a 7-year-old who idolizes his policeman father. The photos show him in a black sweater, learning such things as fingerprinting a criminal, doing first-aid on a black man, learning to fight, learning to shoot — and finally, bringing the criminal, head bowed, to the police desk sergeant, who seems to be judging the man. The story reflects the nervousness common to American society in the 1950s.

There are numerous other filmstrips documented in this entertaining book — about illegal immigration, "Riding on a Bus," "Change is Good," "How to Deal with Electricity at Home," "Earth's Blanket of Air," "The Differences in the Weather," "Why the Moon is Red," "Your Daily Bread," "How We get Cotton" and, finally, "Sleeping on Rubber."

The heyday of filmstrips was in the '40s and '50s when they seemed modern and efficient. Over time, they were phased out, even though the author claims to have found many unused canisters in a number of public schools. "They're rarely checked out anymore," Gregorhy writes, "their celluloid is growing brittle and milky, and eventually, like a long-forgotten lesson, they'll disappear altogether."

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E-mail: dennis@desnews.com