Today we have Denise from StlMotherhood. She's from The Lou, like me. She has kids, like me. She seems really sweet and genuine, like...wait, nevermind.
Anyway, enjoy:
It’s back to school time.
Anyway, enjoy:
It’s back to school time.
Actually the signs in the store have been screaming “it’s
back to school time!” since July, but I wasn’t paying any attention then. Hell no. July is the middle of summer
vacation--no way was I going to crush my kid’s spirits with thoughts of school
and schedules and early morning bus rides. We had camps to conquer, trails to
bike and beaches to storm. Back to school? No way!
I also let the “tax-free weekend” sale whiz right by me in
early August. By this point the whole advertising universe was in a tizzy about
getting the kids ready for school.
“You need this cool backpack or your kid will be a loser!”
“You need stylin’ new jeans that your kid will outgrow by
October!”
“You need a new these snazzy LOL Cat folders, who cares if
the teacher asked for boring purple!”
Still, I didn’t go shopping. There was no way I was going to
play cart derby with all the hill folk who flood Walmart in my part of South
County just because there’s an 11 percent sale going on. No thank you, Bobbie
Sue, I’ll sit this one out.
Soon welcome letters from teachers and principals were
piling up in my inbox. PTOs from two schools were sniffing around for volunteers
and my son’s marching band started fund raising because, hey, those sequins are
not cheap people.
I could no longer avoid the reality of back-to-school
shopping.
I downloaded the kids’ back-to-school supply lists. Well, I
downloaded my first grader’s list, because apparently high school has a much
lower standard for supplies. We have no clue what he’ll need other than a vague
“binder and pencils” suggestion from a letter buried inside a 30-page welcome packet
mailed to the house.
The first grader, on the other hand, is expected to bring his
haul in the week before school.
There are 18 items on Mitch’s list. Or 75 items if you count
that he needs 2 boxes of tissues, 5 folders in very particular colors, 4
erasers, 12 dry erase markers, 15 glues sticks and 24 pencils--sharpened, of
course.
Naturally, none of these items are to be labeled because they’ll go into the community supply closet. Heaven forbid we teach six-year-olds personal responsibility by having them care for their own crayons and glue. Or worse, suffer crushed egos because Trevor has the 128-pack of crayons and Shiloh got sparkly princess pencils.
Mitch and I trudged off to Walmart to do his shopping. Since
we waited an entire TWO WEEKS before schools started, the shelves were picked
clean. Gone were the cheap glue sticks and the only yellow folders left had
exploding zombies on the front.
We scrapped up what we could and moved on to Target.
Target had the folders we needed: a purple plastic folder
WITH prongs and yellow, blue, red and green plastic folders WITHOUT prongs. There’s
no room for individuality in first grade, so we have to get exactly what’s on
the list or be marked as a free thinker. Or cheap. I’m not sure what’s worse.
Target also had $20 BPA-free water bottles and super cute
Bento-styled lunch kits that wouldn’t fit in Mitch’s brand new Iron Man 3 lunch
box.
What they didn’t have was three packages of four count dry
erase markers with fine tips. Oh,
they had thick markers and color markers and dry erase crayons, but black dry
erase markers with fine tips? Nope.
The fun of back-to-school shopping had worn off for Mitch
about an hour previous, so he kindly suggested that I could maybe drop him off
at home to play Minecraft with his brother while I continued the search for
markers. Ha, dream on kid. I’m not doing this alone.
Office Max was just down the street. I prayed that they had
fine tip markers before I had to extend the shopping trip to another county.
Yes! They had plenty of dry erase markers in every size and
color of the rainbow. Including fine tip black markers.
For $6 a package.
$18 dollars for all 12 markers on his list.
Uh, no. I might drive to three stores to get supplies. I’ll happily
schlep 15 bags to open house so my kid doesn’t have to bring a butt load of
supplies on the bus. I’ll even buy the good crayons that my kid will never see.
But I draw the line at $18 worth of dry erase markers.
We’ll just wait for Walmart to restock. In the mean time, I
have pencils to sharpen. 24 plain wooden #2 pencils, that is.
