BACK TO SCHOOL SALE!!

C'est moi!! On my first day of Grade One, in Vienna, Austria.


On some of the other blogs I visit, the Moms are talking about back to school shopping. It's that time of year again. So, I thought I'd entertain you with a little story I wrote for the local paper --at this time, in 1991. The story is still relevant, although some of the references are a bit dated. Enjoy!!

It's mid-summer and they're everywhere--the flyers from the drug marts, the grocery chains and the department stores. I'm not ready to call summer over (I'm of the rare breed of parents who is not anxious to get rid of my kids after the holidays). But I know it's inevitable, so off we go to "catch the sales" and beat the September crowds.

We head for the first store. "Where are the school supplies?" I ask the clerk.
"Three aisles over, past the Halloween display and the Christmas decorations, " she responds impatiently, as if I should know better than to ask.

There we are: a mile of aisle! I put on my sunglasses for fear of neon-blindness. the choices are mind-boggling: ten sizes of binders with covers from neon to Ninja Turtles; sizzler pencils, neon pencils, retractables, erasables, non-erasables, clics, stix, and flexible tips (for writers' cramp). Vaguely I remember my return to school in a simpler time: one pink eraser, a new yellow HB pencil, a bottle of brown mucilage, three scribblers that were thick enough to last all year and my older sister's last year's crayons. That was a ll I needed and they were treasures. We gather all the supplies they need and want and line up at the cashier.
My kids and I are still friends, even though I bought old-fashioned yellow pencils and pink erasers shaped like erasers should be.

Next stop: footwear. In my day the new shoes from the Easter Bunny were polished up for school. Now we have joggers, cross-trainers, aerobics, with brand names that make the Rockefellers shudder. There are curly laces, face laces, Ninja laces, neon laces and Velcro fasteners, not to mention inflatable shoes! (Whatever happened to basic brown oxfords that three generations couldn't wear out?)

From the faces of the other shoppers, I know we are nearing the wardrobe department. My kids are quite sensible about their clothes. I've taught them to read labels carefully, since they have to do their own laundry while I moonlight to pay the back-to-school bills. They choose jeans, MC Hammer pants and a few cheap, plain T-shirts they can tie-dye and paint themselves.

Done! We've shopped ourselves into starvation. We head for McDonald's, my kids and I, blissful in the knowledge that we have survived an ordeal that would split lesser families.

Just one more stop: the Credit Union. I pop my head into the manager's office: "Hi, Dave. Say, what's the interest rate on second mortgages?"