Preparing For School

Since the day after the ceasefire my son has been concerned about when I was going to buy all the school supplies. We are lucky that we don’t need to purchase textbooks, instead we pay the school a set amount and they provide everything.
Even so we have an A4 long list of exercise books, pencils and other various equipment. I stalled for a while until, as I had suspected, a representative of the parents’ committee phoned to inform med that a school bag filled with supplies had been donated for every child in the north.

The last week of the holidays the Matnas had organised a proper summer camp for the children with trips and plenty of group leaders. After dropping them off I went to the school to collect the bags. They were piled up relatively neatly on the floor but there was a bit of a scrum as parents swapped items between bags to ensure that their son didn’t get a Bratz pencil and their daughter didn’t get a motor racing diary.

When I got home I checked through the contents of the bags. There were squared exercise books, which are useful though I think they gave us enough to last to the end of the decade. Unfortunately the lined books were with wide lines which the children haven’t used since first grade. They hardly cost a fortune but the pure waste pains me especially when you consider that thousands of these bags were donated. What really astounds me is that most people don’t understand why I even care. They just throw the useless books in the rubbish and buy replacements.
What shocked me most was the diary. It centred on a popular teenage star and was definitely targeted at teenage girls. Apart from the pages of coupons for feminine products the diary was liberally decorated with pictures of this girl in a bikini and other skimpy clothing. In addition the pages were peppered with boxes of beauty and dieting advice and there where whole page inserts with advice about relationships and other teenage concerns a in a that superficial ‘pop’ tone. And don’t get me started on all the advertising.
I would imagine it could be quite useful for a girl aged 14 but whomever thought it was suitable for primary school girls (grade 1-6) needs their head examined.
My daughter took a quick look at the diary and handed it back to me in bemused disgust remarking that it was no use because there was too much rubbish cluttering up the pages. She much preferred the Bratz diary I’d bought her. So did I.

Although the bags contained many useful items there was still a long list to buy.
On Friday I made a determined effort to get organised and we actually got out to the mall quite early. All the sales were in full swing and my children were very patient as I tried on some clothes and indulged in some successful retail therapy.
Next we went to the cinema to get tickets for Over the Hedge. The thought of being stuck in a cinema with hordes of chatty fidgety children gives me the heebie jeebies, which is why I don’t take my children to the cinema so often. I guessed the Friday morning show would be pretty quiet.

We had an hour left to brandish our school supplies list at the poor assistant in the stationery shop.
By the time we had finished I had a pain in the credit card and two heavy bags full of goodies.
I hauled it all back up to cinema where we had only a few minutes to wait. We were the only people in the cinema. At first my children sat in their assigned seats, eager for the film to start but in the break they ran up and down the stairs and between the seats in an effort to discover the optimal viewing position.
The film was fun, not a masterpiece but very enjoyable and when we emerged from the darkness my husband was just walking towards the cinema.

ES