Scissors envy

Some were hunting for scientific calculators that cost less than $129. Others were fighting for the very last protractor.

“Oh wait,” one mom realized, a bit too late. “That’s not a protractor, is it? I think this is a compass.”

I usually try to avoid Target (or ShopKo or Wal-Mart or even Longs Drug) in the early evening after the First Day of School.

That’s why I planned ahead this year. Taking advantage of late-summer sales, I bought markers, glue sticks and folders. I bought colored pencils, No. 2 pencils, black pens, blue pens, red pens, reams of paper (college-ruled) and one-inch binders.

One year, I had to buy 15 one-inch binders for assorted teens in middle and high school. The stores ran out of one-inch binders that year, and this lack endangered my kids’ grades. So, this year, I bought a dozen one-inch binders in advance. I didn’t buy the cheapo notebooks. They haven’t needed those for years.

Of course, I now have 15 one-inch binders neatly stacked on my closet shelf. That’s because this year my kids needed only two-inch binders or one-and-a-half-inch binders. And they needed cheapo notebooks. “Spiral-bound, please. The other ones fall apart.”

It wouldn’t be so bad if acquiring things like scissors didn’t have some deep social consequences in addition to a weird deadline, like “by tomorrow"—I mean, did the kids really start cutting stuff for important learning activities on Tuesday?

My 13-year-old, driven by the promise of a “possible” prize, needed only a pair of scissors to complete her back-to-school supply ensemble as per the deadline. I have scissors in the house. Several pairs of scissors. I didn’t want to buy more scissors. I’d already written dozens of checks in order to indulge in the luxury of free public education. (For my high-schoolers, there’s the book fee, $20; activity fee, $20; pre-paid yearbook, $60; PE uniform, $20; PE lock, $5; locker deposit, $5; biology lab fee, $10 … the list goes on.)

I finally found a pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer and handed them to her.

“Oh, they’re the cheap scissors,” she said, as sadly as if I had just run over her hamster or forgotten her birthday. “I’ll just say that I didn’t have time to get a good pair.”

“Like they’re going to ask?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine who might question the quality of my daughter’s office supplies.

She just looked at me. You really never know what the other middle-school kids are going to care about. They might be checking out your shoes or your backpack or your Blink 182 folder, “Eeeew, you like them?!?” They just might be looking at your scissors. I tried to exude confidence.

“It’s OK,” I consoled my daughter. “The other kids will be too worried about their own scissors to pay any attention to yours.”

Ah, nothing like school to prepare you for the real world.