Picket Fence Post

Dear Teenaged Staples Employees with Whom I Spoke Yesterday,

You were all so very pleasant yesterday when I asked several of you where I could locate Trapper Keepers in your store.

Clutching three sets of school supply lists for my three kids (for items which ultimately cost me $130 . . . and I didn’t buy everything on the lists and made many unauthorized substitutions with store brands) I must’ve looked like a crazy lady to whom you gave quizzical looks. Was my scary/stressed out demeanor the reason why, when I asked, “Where are your Trapper Keepers?” you kept showing me intricate $20 zippered contraptions which were clearly meant for high school or higher-level students? Or were you just not in the mood to deal with me?

“No, that cannot possibly be what the teacher wants,” I said, pointing to one of the lists. “This if for a fourth grader.”

When I continued to get nothing but vacant looks, I dashed back to your humongous school supply display, grabbed a two-pocket folder WITHOUT fasteners (per teachers’ requests) and held it up to an employee. “See? This says ‘Trapper’ on it. That means that somewhere, there’s a Trapper Keeper for this to go into.”

More blankness. “Sorry,” one kind young girl said with a smile, returning to her work of stacking merchandise.

I received similar responses from other staffers whose glances bestowed unspoken pity upon me, the poor woman who, minutes earlier, had been muttering to her fourth grade son, “The teacher’s just gonna have to deal with these substitutions . . . HOW many of those? Ten? No way.”

Then, after 45 migraine-inducing minutes of trying to locate the nearly 40 items on the three lists (not including the ones I didn’t buy), I accidentally stumbled across a small Mead display. With Trapper Keepers. For $6.99. I brought a light blue Trapper Keeper to the front of the store where the nice young girl was still stacking the $20 zippered items and said, “I just thought you should know, THIS is a Trapper Keeper. It’s at the end of Aisle 3, in case any other parents come in here looking for it.”

In the future, perhaps you kind, polite and smiling young folks could put in a little effort into discerning if your store actually carries an item for which an already frazzled parent, clutching a vast school supply list, is looking instead of just providing blank stares.

Happy Fall!

Sincerely,

Meredith O’Brien

Image credit: Ironically, from Office Depot.

Wow, I’ve gotten more responses to the posting of the school supply lists my three kids received than I have about other hot button topics as of late . . . The folks over at the Boston-oriented blog, Universal Hub, wrote about the lists I posted on the Picket Fence Post earlier this week and there have been comments slamming the teachers for compiling detailed lists for everything from scissors to twin-pocket folders, 10 glue sticks and boxes of tissues.

Universal Hub commenter Lynn asked:

“Could this be the teacher’s way of driving home that the school system is underfunded? That was the first thing that came to mind when I [saw] those lists, since I remember, oh so many years ago, most of that stuff (scissors, glue, markers, crayons, ruler) was provided for us. Heck, sometimes paper and composition books were as well.”

But others were having no part of that line of argument, calling the lists excessive and nit-picky. SwirlyGrrl said teachers who were really in need wouldn’t ask for the kinds of stuff on the lists:

“Micromanagers and control freaks, [in my humble opinion], get real specific and demand some needlessly expensive things without regard for the burdens they impose in shopping time and cost. If you fail to produce these items, you get chewed out for ‘not caring about your kid’s education’ . . .”

Have any of your children received their school supply lists yet? For comparison’s sake, it would be great if you could post your lists in the comments section below so we can get a sense of whether this is just MY kids’ school system, or whether this long-listitis is more widespread an issue.

Bring out your lists! 

My kids’ three teachers have made contact with their new pupils via snail mail. Along with their pleasant letters — which attempt to psych the children up for the new school year – came the obligatory school supply lists. I know that I say this every year, but something about these very practical, but ever-growing lists bugs me.

See for yourselves:

One of our fourth grader’s supply list:

• One pair of Fiskars pointed-tip kid scissors
• Two rolls of 3/4″ Scotch tape
• One ruler, plastic
• 10 (.74 oz.) white glue sticks
• Three packages of #2 pencils with erasers
• One box of 12 count Crayola washable markers (conical tip) (fat)
• One box of 12 count Crayola washable markers (fine tip) (skinny)
• One box of 24 count Crayola crayons
• One box of 24 count Crayola colored pencils
• Three (Sanford) Sharpie markers, ultra fine point, permanent, black
• Nine twin pocket folders, one of each color, no clasps inside: tan, yellow, light blue, dark blue, orange, green, red, purple, white. (NOTE: Has anyone seen a tan pocket folder? I’m afraid this is going to be difficult to locate.)
• Two gummy erasers
• One pencil bag with zipper that has three holes to fit in your trapper
• One trapper (NOTE: I’m assuming this is like a Trapper Keeper from when I was a kid and not a trap of another sort, like a bear trapper, or cranky mother trapper.)
• Two packages 4 X 6 ruled white index cards
• Three Mead composition books, black and white firm marbled covers
• 100 sheets, wide-ruled
• “During the school year, I will be asking for additional glue sticks and pencils.”

The aforementioned list is not to be confused with the second list for my other fourth grader:

• One pair of Fiskars pointed-tip kid scissors
• Two large glue sticks
• Two packages of 12 #2 pencils with erasers
• Two boxes of 8 count Crayola washable markers (conical tip, fat)
• Two boxes of 12 count Crayola colored pencils
• Two plastic, two-pocket portfolio folders
• Six twin-pocket folders, one of each color: red, green, blue, purple, orange, yellow
• Three 100-page, wide-ruled Mead composition books, black and white firm marbled covers
• Two 70-page, wide-ruled, single subject, spiral-bound notebooks, one red, one blue
• One 4 X 6 spiral-bound memo book (at least 50 pages), solid color
• One plastic accordion style folder (string, snap or elastic closure)
• One plastic pencil box
• Three postage stamps
• Two boxes of tissues

And last, but not least, the supply list for the second grader:

• 24 count crayons
• 12 count colored pencils
• One pair Fiskars pointed scissors
• One binder, 1-inch, 3-ring View Binder (clear front to insert a cover page)
• Six glue sticks
• One bottle of Elmer’s glue
• 24 count #2 pencils (Dixon Ticonderoga are the best)
• Three block erasers
• Four pocket folders (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 blue, 1 green)
• One pencil case or box
• One letter-sized clipboard

One of the letters explicitly tells us not to label the supplies because “the items on the list will be used by the whole class . . . We will do any required labeling together in class.”

There’s one lingering question that has been bugging The Spouse and I for years that we keep forgetting to ask: What happens to all the scissors we buy, year after year for the classrooms? Do they disappear? Are they melted down and recycled someplace? Is there a black market for scissors? Why couldn’t we just have each kid buy one pair of scissors, be responsible for them the entire year, then take them home in June and bring them to the next classroom he or she is in the following year? Why a new pair every year? That isn’t very green, now is it?

Image credit: Fiskars.