The dreaded season of
School Shopping Lists
or as I think of it
"Let's throw money away like it's nuthin'."
I don't know why I must buy 24 wood pencils,
because my kids don't use them.
They prefer, and we buy,
mechanical ones.
Same goes for the 12 pack of eraser tips.
Three yellow highlighters,
One orange highlighter,
One blue highlighter,
3 red pens,
n' two black sharpies.
But ya know what gets me?
I mean,
really annoys me?
The "must-have" protractor and compass.
Sure, they're cheap.
It's not that--
it's that the kids spend about ten minutes
ever using them in 6th grade
and never again.
But we have to buy another one
every. stinkin'. year.
Perhaps other kids hold onto theirs
and pass 'em down to the next of kin,
but my yahoos
lose them
about 20 minutes after they use them.
But every year,
they are on The List.
Other things on The List?
Baggies.
Why?
I want to know why kids need to
bring baggies to school.
I can't recall my yahoos bringing home
50 baggies of something during the year,
can you?
When I was a kid,
The List was short:
Two #2 pencils.
One blue ball-point pen.
1 pack 100-count notebook paper.
1 Blue three-ring binder.
1 pack of index cards.
We didn't have backpacks,
we did have bungee cord things
to bundle our books together
for the walks to and from school.
We used brown paper sacks
or newspaper comics
to make our own book covers.
As for clothing,
well growing up in Miami,
the list was equally short:
sneakers (sandals were the preferred footwear,
but one had to have sneakers for PE),
a pair of white socks for those PE sneakers,
a PE uniform as such:
just like those.
And as far as I can recall,
that was it.
Elementary Girls weren't allowed to wear pants
unless it was 60o outside.
I was thrilled to be able to buy pants (not jeans)
in 7th grade!
Jeans were unacceptable for girls back in the day,
until we moved to South Carolina my sophomore year
and I finally bought my first pair of jeans then!
It was a big deal.
When I think about how little we brought with us to school,
I am amazed at the generation I grew up in
and the wonderful accomplishments that came from that era.
I wonder if Bill Gates still has his compass and protractor?
When I was in school, we still had to wear dresses...all the way through high school. And panty hose, too!
ReplyDeleteSheesh.
"/
It sounds like we had the same list of school supplies when we were in school. We had to wear dresses to school (except for snowy days, then we got to wear long pant but never jeans) up until about jr. high and then the rules started to change. I remember wearing Levi's 501's jeans in high school. Oh and thank goodness pantyhose were invented, no more garter belts and nylons, woo hoo! Boy am I dating myself!
ReplyDeleteAll I can think to add to your mandatory list is a red pencil for checking papers. And that was it.
ReplyDeleteCan you hear the AZ toilet flushing full of school supplies? School starts in a week.
When I was in middle school, we had a uniform - dresses for girls, shorts for boys. And our PE uniform, oh my goodness, we had to wear rompers. ROMPERS. And they were *called* rompers.
ReplyDeleteYou Americans might not get this, being American. It's a very British thing, I think. We still had so much of the British culture in those days. So our rompers were exactly like baby rompers - puffy nappy-covering pants with elasticised leg bands. In tartan material!!!
Oh the shame.
Thank goodness I went to a freedom school for high school. We could wear whatever we wanted, and PE involved jumping out of high windows onto a crash pad or hanging around at the local playground.
Ugh! The PE uniforms! Yuck! I think I was scarred for life from those things! But at least where I grew up girls could wear dresses! And my kids have to bring anti-bacterial wet wipes and or hand sanitizer, and kleenex, but the baggies has me stumped too. Yeah, not a fan of THE LIST either!
ReplyDeleteOuch . . . with my last one in college it's more like laptop, a pyramid of expensive and heavy books, meal plans, a bike (it's cheaper than a car!), if we can just survive a couple more years . . . thank goodness for FAFSA and scholarships, they need that for k-12 :D
ReplyDeleteKristin
Oh my heck! I had one of those uniforms in Junior High. I HATED them. I hated having to dress out in front of the other girls (probably because I was flat chested) Although I do remember in high school we had to purchase all our own textbooks and then return them at the end of the year, kind of like college today.
ReplyDelete