By Laura Grimes
Certain laws of buying school supplies are writ large in pink Pearl eraser and are never, ever violated. Herewith the laws:
–You will be slightly irritated with yourself for choosing to shop for school supplies at a certain store despite a bitter memory of hundreds of backpacks conspicuously blocking aisles the first week of school last year and were still supposed to be on sale two days later but had suddenly disappeared and been replaced by Halloween decorations.
–You will be slightly irritated with yourself for choosing to shop for school supplies at a certain store even though some mailing envelopes you bought there a few weeks earlier mysteriously never made it into your shopping bag.
–The Small Large Smelly Boy, otherwise known as Felix/Martha, will have multiple pages of school supply lists carefully marked with a blue pen.
–You will carry a very small list from the Large Large Smelly Boy that contains only pens, notebook paper, folders.
–The folders must number seven and all be different colors.
–The first shopping cart will be sticky.
–The second shopping cart will be wobbly.
–The third shopping cart will be stuck unwedgably to the fourth shopping cart.
–The fifth shopping cart will have bits of wet parsley stuck all over the bottom.
–The sixth shopping cart will have the child seat clamped shut by the safety restraint.
–You will be determined to use this shopping cart at all cost to avoid standing in the foyer for another hour.
–It will take serious finger muscle to unfasten the safety restraint.
–You will notice the safety restraint is slightly sticky and just plain gross.
–After you unfasten the safety restraint you will have to apply serious arm muscle to unclench the child seat.
–The shopping bags hanging over your arm will land in your face.
–After you unclench the child seat and remove the shopping bags from your face and put them in the child seat and smooth the front of your shirt, Felix/Martha will refuse to touch the shopping cart.
–When you wheel the shopping cart into the store, mega-screen TVs and cases of Budweiser will block your path.
–After negotiating the mega-screen TVs and cases of Budweiser, stacks of shoes on sale will block your path.
–After negotiating the stacks of shoes on sale, racks of clothes on clearance will block your path.
–Racks of clothes on clearance will go on for several miles.
–You will be forced to push the shopping cart through scads of synthetic material and flowery designs with rhinestones.
–You will avoid thinking about the sticky residue you are leaving behind on the synthetic material.
–After another hour, you will eventually make it to the school-supply aisle.
–Even though the spiral notebook with 70 sheets is on sale for 20 cents, Felix/Martha’s supply list will insist on spiral notebooks with 100 sheets that cost $1.79.
–Even though Felix/Martha needs only two single-subject composition books, you will be able to find only three-subject composition books.
–Both Large Smelly Boys will insist on only black pens.
–Even though you need four packages of black pens, you will find exactly one package of black pens.
–Even though pens are buy one get one free, you will find exactly one package of black pens.
–You will put one package of black pens and one package of blue pens in the cart.
–Felix/Martha will freak out.
–You will carefully explain that you will check another aisle shortly but that the blue pens are a just-in-case.
–Felix/Martha will insist that the Large LSB will have to use the blue pens.
–You will carefully explain that you will check another aisle shortly but that the blue pens are a just-in-case.
–Felix/Martha will joyfully show you a battery-operated pencil sharpener that claims to be visually stunning, have superb performance and be an expression of style.
–The battery-operated pencil sharpener will have titanium-bonded blades and an EZ-view shavings reservoir.
–You will regret having eaten a half sandwich with hummus and cucumber for lunch.
–You will leave the shopping cart with the slightly sticky safety restraint near the battery-operated pencil sharpener.
–You will find half of one side of an aisle completely devoted to folders.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that are pink and purple.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that have butterflies and flowers.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that have unicorns and dolphins.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that have fairies and mermaids.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that have rainbows.
–You will find an improbable number of folders that have circles and stripes and paisley designs that are in decidedly girl colors.
–You will find folders with kittens with big eyes.
–You will be mildly excited to find folders with deer and trees until you spot the daffodil.
–You will find folders with designs that look suspiciously like graffiti.
–You will have a difficult time finding solid-color folders.
–You will have a difficult time finding solid-color folders in seven colors.
–If you find solid-color folders they will have vertical pockets instead of the desired horizontal pockets.
–If you find solid-color folders, the color choices will include pink and purple.
–When you ask Felix/Martha if he thinks the deer and trees folder will be acceptable to his brother he will look at you like you just plastered wet parsley on your chin.
–If you find a folder with a big frog, it will have a black background and there will be only one.
–If you find attractive-looking folders with collegiate designs, you will find only four designs.
–One of the four collegiate designs will include a semi-pink color and tiaras.
–You will wonder whether you can mix-and-match the collegiate designs with the deer and trees, but you will notice they are two different widths.
–You will notice some folders have a 3-hole punch and some do not.
–You will hate this about folders.
–You will seriously consider the vertical folders that are clear even though they don’t fold open, but then notice they come in only four colors.
–One of those colors will be pink.
–You will become uncomfortably aware that you are holding several folders of many different designs, three different sizes and three different styles of pockets, none of which is perfectly acceptable.
–Right when you become uncomfortably aware that you are being ridiculous and need to return all the folders, you will look at the entire folder display and wonder where the heck they all came from.
–Right when you look at the entire folder display and wonder where the heck they all came from, a woman will park her cart right in front of the entire folder display.
–You will stare at the woman who parked her cart right in front of the entire folder display hoping she will get the message, but she will be focused on a folder with a unicorn.
–Even though you secretly want to kneecap the woman who parked her cart right in front of the entire folder display, you will sweetly ask if you can move her cart over just a tad.
–You will put back all the folders in what you hope are the right places and begin to re-sort other misplaced folders that you never touched.
–You will become uncomfortably aware that even though your list includes only three items, you have successfully obtained only one.
–You will grab seven solid-color folders even though they have vertical pockets and two of the colors are pink and purple.
–When you ask Felix/Martha to get the cart he will look at you like you just plastered wet parsley on your chin because he won’t touch it.
–Instead, Felix/Martha will agonize over how many colored pencils he should get.
–As you glide the cart past Felix/Martha and keep moving, you will tell him to get whatever damn box of colored pencils he wants.
–You will realize it is long past dinnertime.
–You will find more packages of black pens more than halfway across the store and chuck the blue pens.
–In a choice of two short checkout lines, you will pick the line where a woman in front of you has only two tidy bags on the conveyor belt.
–While you are placing zillions of school supplies on the conveyor belt, the woman in front of you will upend her two tidy bags and spill out hundreds of tiny jars of baby food.
–Every single tiny jar of baby food will have to be scanned separately.
–The checker next to you, the one you didn’t pick, will stand there with no customers.
–While you are waiting in line for an hour while the woman in front of you tries to pay with more than one check, several customers will move through the line next to you.
–When it is finally your turn at the checkout, you will discover that the gluesticks are buy-one-get-one-free, but you only have one package.
–At the checkout, you will discover that the sticky notes are buy-one-get-one-free, but you only have one package.
–One of your neatly cut-out little monetary enticements — otherwise known as a coupon — means the checker will have to manually take 10 percent off each school supply, which means every 99-cent folder, every 75-cent filler paper, every stupid-ridiculous-irritating-I-could-just-open-a-vein-and-why-don’t-you-just-put-a-barcode-on-the-bleeping-coupon 89-cent 3×5 memo pad.
–The checker will hand you a receipt only slightly longer than the racks of clothes on clearance that go on for several miles.
–After you get home, the Large Large Smelly Boy will take one look at the folders and without saying anything will casually take out the pink and purple ones and put them aside.