Avert!

School supply shopping is fun for those who can afford to do it. Every year our church, like many others, promises to supply kids with the necessities for beginning school. Of course, with no school-age child in the near vicinity, our family adopts a backpack or two and fills it with the items on the list. Here are the comments made while procuring said items:

• “There is no way this kid will use those binder dividers!” – dividers have been on supply lists since the turn of the century. My children returned them unused. Correction: one child returned them unused, the other had them colorfully delineated in a binder.
• ”How many composition notebooks? They’ll be lucky to fill five pages in one!” – another purchase which resulted in a few pages inked, but never a quarter of a book used.
• ”Graph paper. I think one sheaf would do for the class.” – there must be two assignments a year which require graph paper. Although, returned-to-my-home graph paper always got used by me. I thought it was fun for making notes.
• ”Pocket folders? Why?” If it goes in a pocket, it’s bound for the trash.
• “Colored pencils.” Sigh. These also were returned every year with most still unused and pointy. However, ”If you didn’t have them for the two assignments, you were screwed. No one shared theirs.” (Direct quote from my son.)

My biggest problem in shopping is ”the fun stuff.” Sniff. I never had the Crayola crayons with built-in-sharpener and hundreds of colors. I had the 16-pack. The ”Trapper Keeper” binder! Wow. That would have made all the difference in my education! And a fun pencil case that I could zip and unzip daily was never in my supply chain. Now they have ”flexible” rulers that wobble back and forth, which I gleefully purchased, imagining the kids whacking each other with them.

Thus, the Bic crystal pens came into play years ago when I first found them, all because of that serious school supply deprivation I experienced. (I think we really only had to start school with a pencil and paper back then, didn’t we?) Thus, today’s comic strip gave me a chuckle and memories to share. Thank goodness we can help someone else prepare for an education.