I stand here today, letting the world
– or at least the South Valley – know that I am officially the
stupidest mom on the planet. I’m also the poorest. Oh sure, many
moms can make those claims. But I have actual proof that I’m both
stupid and broke.
I stand here today, letting the world – or at least the South Valley – know that I am officially the stupidest mom on the planet. I’m also the poorest. Oh sure, many moms can make those claims. But I have actual proof that I’m both stupid and broke.
You see, I went back-to-school shopping without The List.
Every parent reading this just let out a horrified gasp because they know how stupid it is to go shopping without The List. The List is exactly what it sounds like – a list of school supplies each child should bring on the first day of school. Teachers send The List out right before school starts.
Normally, The List doesn’t send parents into bankruptcy – unless you have a million kids or something. But when you lose The List, you don’t know exactly what to buy. And when you don’t know exactly what to buy, you have to buy at least one of every item in the back-to-school aisles.
And that’s why I’m broke.
Do you know how many different kinds of colored pencils there are? Let me tell you. There are pre-sharpened, no-sharpening necessary, pastel-colored, pastel with glitter, primary colored, primary colored with glitter, glitter without pastel or primary colors, earth-tone pencils, country color pencils, fat pencils, thin pencils, and pencils that are filled with gel and thus, aren’t really pencils at all.
And it doesn’t stop there. No, there are a billion different combinations of regular pencils too.
Today’s kids don’t just grab a yellow No. 2 pencil and head out the door. They have choices now. There are mechanical pencils, fat pencils, no lead pencils, soft lead pencils, pencils with large erasers, pencils that don’t erase at all, and pencils that have special sayings on them. And you don’t even want to know about the pen selection.
Even binder paper isn’t easy. In my day, we had paper with lines on it. It was all the same. Nobody cared what type you had. But not today. Nope, today you have college-ruled, wide-ruled and plain binder paper. I can’t even tell the darned difference. They all look the same.
But since I lost The List, I didn’t know what type of paper to buy Junior. So I bought one of each. And then I went down the aisle, tossing in at least one of each package of colored pencils, markers, and crayons. I went bananas in the regular pencil section, grabbing pencils of all types and sizes with wild abandon. And then I went a little overboard in the pen aisle, filling the cart with every conceivable type and color of pen available.
And it didn’t stop there. No, Junior needed a whiteboard. But what size? And what about whiteboard pens? Did he need colored? Or just black? Did he need an eraser for the whiteboard? Or the spray stuff? And then there was glue. Did he need a glue stick, Elmer’s white glue or non-acid gel glue? Maybe he didn’t need glue at all. Maybe he only needed tape. But did he need double-stick, regular or invisible tape? Did he need a stapler? Or scissors? Even that was difficult.
What size scissors were too big? Or too small?
After a while, it didn’t matter. I just piled everything in the cart and hoped my credit card didn’t explode at the check out.
Of course, then I had to get the other supplies – like tissues and the paper towels. The problem was, without The List, I didn’t know when to stop buying or even what I should be buying. Did the teacher only want paper towels and tissues? And if she wanted tissues did she want the upright box, the rectangular box, the anti-bacterial or the anti-viral? And what about those paper towels? Should we go with patterned or plain?
And what if she wanted more than just a couple rolls of paper towels and some tissues? Did she want anti-bacterial wipes? Windex? Comet? Bug spray? I didn’t know, so I just added it to the cart and wondered if they’d let me pay for it with two credit cards instead of just one.
And don’t you know it, the minute we got home and tried to stuff all the supplies into Junior’s brand-new backpack, I found The List. It was short and sweet. I sifted through all the junk we’d bought and loaded Junior’s backpack up and vowed never, ever to lose The List again.
Laurie Sontag is a Gilroy writer and mom who wishes parenthood had come with instructions. Her column is syndicated. She can be reached at la****@la**********.com.
