School Daze

I sent my son off to first grade this year, with a new backpack and a cool Ferrari pencil case, and all the supplies that were on the list provided by the teachers. His pencil case had, among other things, a full set of colored pencils and markers, and I thought that all those supplies should last him through to January, when the supermarkets have a second sale on school supplies. I had no idea that I would be making nearly weekly trips to the stationary store, or picking up school supplies at the supermarket, in what seems like the endless task of keeping my son's backpack properly equipped.

Take, for example, the colored pencils. His cool Ferrari pencil case has slots for 24 pencils and every weekend when we sit down to do homework, there are at least 5 pencils missing. "Colin , are you sure you didn't leave some of your pencils in your desk?" "No, Mom. We have to take everything out of our desks on Fridays." "Then what happened to your pencils? You had a full set on Monday." "I dunno". Needless to say, shortly after realizing that this was going to be a weekly restock, I purchased a huge box with every possible colored pencil under the sun. It is now December, and the refill box is nearly empty. It is especially annoying because they ask that we put names on all the supplies. So every weekend I have to take adhesive labels, write out Colin's name a couple of times, and then tape a label securely to each colored pencil. Why, you may ask, do I bother when the pencils don't seem to last for more than 2 weeks, and having the name on them certainly doesn't seem to help in getting it back if it is misplaced? I have no idea. I'm a sucker for stupid rules.

There is also the glue saga. I have no idea why, but first graders go through glue at a truly alarming rate. I keep wondering if they are sniffing it. I have purchased at least 5 huge glue sticks so far this year. And any day, I imagine that Colin will waltz home and tell me that he needs another one. Is he selling them on the underground glue market to junkie pre-schoolers?

Finally, the pencil sharpeners. Along with the endless procession of new colored pencils, there has been an endless procession of pencil sharpeners. Just last week, I purchased pencil sharpener #5, only one day after having purchased pencil sharpener #4. In the beginning, he didn't have the right kind of sharpener. He needed one with a narrower opening to sharpen better. Then the teachers told me it would be better if he had a sharpener that had a little container attached to collect the pencil shavings so he wouldn't have to get up from his desk and go to the waste basket every time he needed to sharpen his pencil. Then, of course, some were just crappy quality and broke shortly after purchase (pencil sharpener #4 broke before even making it to school).

I'm sure that any experienced parent reading this is shaking his/her head, laughing, and saying, "What an amateur!" But I miss the good ole days of pre-school, when everything was included, and I only had to supply the child.