Here they come ... ready or not

School is starting, and with it comes the rush of parents to provide all the paraphernalia needed to send their kids on their way with best school supplies for the year to come. Whereas we, who walked to school alone that first day of first grade with our satchels full of Big Chief tablets, number two pencils and a cardboard cigar boxes, don’t quite get the need for all that stuff. 

I recently toured the school supplies aisle. Of course, I had no idea what some of the items were. I taught school for thirty years, but my years were in junior high and the most complicated object those kids needed was a selection of different colored folders. 

They didn’t need ear buds. I just hoped they didn’t bring ear bugs. They didn’t need zip lock bags. They may have had them, but those contained sandwiches and maybe a few illegal substances: like bubble gum and Tootsie Rolls. We furnished the tissues and prayed to God that we didn’t need paper towels and disinfecting wipes. 

As I said, some of these things are a mystery to me. Composition books are mentioned often on these lists. Is that a spiral notebook? Is the paper inside perforated to tear out easily, or is it sewn into the hard cover so that it can be used as a journal … which can be passed on to later generations? 

And just exactly where are the teachers going to store twenty boxes of tissues, twenty rolls of paper towels, twenty containers of Play-Doh, and twenty packages of index cards. I don’t know about the modern day kids, but my kids would have expected to use or play with everything on the first day of school. They would have opened and sampled the Play-Doh; they would have tasted the glue and furthermore, they would have used and broken the red crayons. 

In some schools, the suggested supply list included a large pink eraser. I always preferred the green ones. They were softer and provided a very sensual place to draw with my ball-point pen. Before ball point pens came into vogue when I was in the seventh grade (and didn’t work very well), we struggled with ink pens that refilled and cartridges which had to be replaced in our seldom used pens. So maybe we should have been asked to bring a few paper towels (if they had been invented back in the early ‘60s. 

Of course, there are some things our kids don’t have to bring. Nothing was mentioned about those pennies we brought for our milk break: one penny for white milk and two pennies for chocolate. Whereas these kids are asked to bring a bottle of white glue and a couple of glue sticks, we were asked to bring a bottle of brown Elmer’s Glue with the rubber nipple on the top. I remember one kid knocked his over in his desk in fourth grade and the teacher like to have never gotten his geography book loose from the bottom of his desk. 

It’s expensive to get a kid equipped for school. Outfitting a family of four kids must require a bank loan, so the list should have included a copy of the parent’s tax return and an application for a federal grant. Although these items are important, what teachers really want are kids eager to learn and parents willing to help. What parents want is the best our schools can give our children. The slate is clean and the new year begins next week. Ready or not, here they come.