Getting supplied

Macauley and I did his school supply shopping this afternoon. He is actually pretty excited to get back to Wanda Gray. The first grade list wasn't quite as extensive as the kindergarten one. For example, we only had to get 6 glue sticks and last year it was 15 the first time around and then Macauley's teacher sent out an SOS for more sticks two other times later in the year, so we ended up buying probably 50 some. All in the name of education, so I'm glad to do it. This year we needed:

2 dozen Dixon brand #2 pencils (please sharpen)
1 pkg. pencil-top erasers
1 box Crayola-brand crayons, 24 count
1 pair Fiskar scissors, blunt tip
6 glue sticks
1- 4oz. bottle of washable, white glue
2 boxes of tissues
1 box of 8 washable markers, classic colors
1 pkg. antibacterial wipes
4 “AA” batteries
1 three-hole, fabric pencil case
1 bottle of hand sanitizer
1 box of Ziploc bags (sandwich size)
2 two-pocket, heavy duty folders (not plastic)

I picked up a number of things for my own classroom while we were there, but not quite as many as our 3-foot long receipt makes it seem. Walmart usually has their spiral notebooks for about 10 cents right before school, and I always buy enough so that I can give one to each of my students to use as a journal. This year, I bought 175 (to cover both semesters and several sections of classes). I handed one to the sweet older lady checking us out and told her how many I had. She tried to ring them up as a quantity, but the computer wouldn't let her, so she rang up one and then just kept hitting the repeat button. I was thinking she might want to let off a bit, since she was pushing it faster than the number was showing up on the screen, but I didn't say anything (even though I DID ring groceries for a few years in college and still count that as one of my favorite jobs ever). Sure enough, she quits pressing and the computer keeps going to 200+ notebooks. She then pulls out the receipt and begins manually counting how many she's got on there and then has to go back and one by one hit the minus button and scan a notebook to erase the 40 some she is over. She pulls that receipt out and again manually counts to see how many she has returned. Meanwhile, Macauley keeps pulling Pop Rocks and ChapStick and a mini Etch-a-Sketch and asking why he can't get it all. When all is said and done, Mary reprints a third copy of the receipt that's the length of my leg, and as if I didn't already feel guilty enough about all the paper wasted on that whole deal, I had forgotten my reusable bags and notice that Mary has bagged all of about 2 glue sticks per bag so I've gone through a bunch of plastic, too.

What I thought was really cute, though, was that while Macauley and I were in a holding pattern in the school supply aisle while a clerk went to "the back" to find the above mentioned "fabric" pencil pouch in a color other than pink for us, I noticed an older guy, kind of country looking, wandering down the aisle talking on his cell phone and looking for something. I heard him say, "Well, I don't see it yet, but I'm in the aisle with all the mamas, so I must be in the right place." I guess school supply shopping is mama's work...