Friday, August 26, 2005
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
Nothing Routine About Back to School
By J’AMY PACHECO
Summer vacation is coming to an end. At my house, that signals the start of back to school routines consisting of two phases: trying to hurry up and have all the fun we can, and buying a lot of stuff to get ready for Day One of Fourth Grade.
Getting ready is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not easy to have fun quickly, and there is a LOT of stuff a nine-year-old girl needs to start a new year in a new school. Clothing, for instance.
Thinking I would tackle the back-to-school shopping the easy way, I gave my daughter a children’s clothing catalog that came in the mail. I handed her a pen and suggested she circle anything that interested her. I would then order a few new outfits over the phone or online, and the clothing would be conveniently delivered right to our door.
She returned the catalog about an hour later (and kept the pen, I might add). She had circled what she liked, which was, apparently, everything.
Clearly, the shopping had gotten out of hand before it even got started. Driven by pure curiosity, I started adding up the items she’d selected — denim and knit skirts, short and long sleeved shirts, dresses, jumpers, shoes, jeans, and even pants and skorts made of a trendy pink camouflage print fabric.
Clothing and shoes alone added up to a whopping $1,561.91. Of course, she selected new underwear to go with all that new outerwear. Underwear, socks and pajamas added up to $161.90. Her new school doesn’t require uniforms, but that didn’t stop her from selecting $120.91 worth of plaid skirts, white shirts and red sweaters found in the uniform section.
Even the boy’s section held some appeal. She selected t-shirts with sayings like, “I know a kid who knows a kid who is on the honor roll,” “The dog ate my homework” and, “Just be glad I’m not your kid.” There were six of these smart-mouth t-shirts, and they totaled $47.94. (After the girl’s department totals, the t-shirts actually seemed like a bargain.)
She apparently felt the need for a new place to park all those clothes at the end of the day, so she circled a pop-up clothes hamper on sale for $9.99. It wouldn’t begin to hold half the items she selected.
My big spender was unfazed when I announced the financial total of what she’d selected.
“That’s a LOT of money,” this budget-conscious mom told her. “You’d better start trying to get your own TV show.”
“You should have entered the America’s Funniest Mom contest,” she retorted. “Then you’d have your own TV show.”
As if that settled it. At the moment, we’re still trying to whittle the endless list down to something remotely manageable — and affordable.
It’s not just clothing, though. A fourth-grader can’t show up at school without a new backpack — on wheels, of course — stuffed with new binders, folders, paper, book covers, crayons, glue sticks and a pencil box filled with pencils.
She doesn’t exactly need a new backpack; there are perfectly good backpacks from kindergarten, first, second and third grades shoved in the back of the hall closet. I’d donate them, but her name is emblazoned on them in bold black permanent marker. It seems you can’t start a new year at a new school wearing new clothes and dragging an old backpack, so we’re in the market. Again.
It’s not like she really needs pencils, either. At last count, we had 2,694 pencils scattered between her desk, my purse, the kitchen junk drawer, the sofa cushions and under the seats of the car.
Pencils are one thing we are never short of. People are always giving us pencils, and we can’t resist buying cute ones. We have Christmas pencils, Valentine’s Day pencils, promotional give-away pencils, pencils emblazoned with the names of my daughter’s friends and souvenir pencils from every tourist attraction we’ve ever visited.
In fact, if wealth was measured in pencils, we’d have enough to buy everything in that children’s clothing catalog.
Unfortunately, we can’t use most of those pencils, because they’re “too cute” or “too special.” So it’s off to the office supply store to buy plain, boring yellow pencils that can be used without guilt.
School starts in two weeks. My daughter doesn’t have a single new thing — except that pen she swiped from me.
Ah, well. I guess you have to start somewhere.
Copyright 2005, Metropolitan News Company