School Supplies

I bought my kids school supplies today, and as always, had my annual apoplexy in the middle of Wal-mart about it.

I swear, every year the lists get longer and longer! And half the crap they want parents to buy isn't even for the kids, but for the teachers. When I was a kid, our only "extra" item was a single box of Kleenex. Nowadays, my kids are expected to provide 3 boxes of Kleenex, a large bottle of hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, Ziploc baggies, dry erase markers, trash bags, and paper towels. And now this year, they've added one that just pisses me off: computer printer paper. I think I can safely say for everyone here...WTF?!

I can't even bring myself to be mad at the teachers for this because I know it's not their fault. The effin' districts keep cutting their budgets so much that when they aren't playing musical chairs with the teachers and principals, they're totally shafting them on supplies THEY should be providing the teachers with.

My kids' school, Sierra Vista, raised $15,000 dollars in a fundraising campaign selling cookie dough last year. Guess what for? A brand, spanking new electronic sign that only tells the date, time, and temperature on the marquee scroll. Are you kidding me?! You people can't afford to pay for the basic supplies every teacher in that school needs, but you're raising money for a sign that is, for all intents and purposes, a big, fat, waste of cash? You idiots need to get your priorities straight, okay? It is completely unfair that you're making the teachers buy their own supplies, and it's especially unfair that you're covertly making us parents buy the teachers' supplies for them. And why not? It's not like we pay taxes for that sort of thing...You know, while you're at it, Powers That Be, why don't you take up a cookie dough collection to buy yourselves some really nice, leather, cushiony office chairs, and desks made out of real mahogany from the Amazonian rainforests!

But you know what's really unfair? I spent $230 on all three kids' school supplies (and that didn't even include haircuts, new shoes, and new clothes), and you know what's going to happen to those things the moment my kids take them in? The teachers are going to strip them from my kids and put everything in a community pool. I'm anti-Communism, okay? I have a real big problem with that.

When I started kindergarten, my teachers tried to pull that nonsense, and I bawled about it because I was super excited to have brand new crayons to use, and I was crushed when they stole them from me and put them in their community bin. I went home in tears, and my parents, also anti-Communist, marched right up to those teachers and raised all sorts of hell until they gave me every single thing back. Today, I would do the exact same thing for my kids. The problem is that I couldn't get away with it like my folks could. I would raise hell with the school, but they would exact retribution against me by putting a black mark on all three kids' records. So all I can do in this matter is grin and bear it. Oh, and rebelliously refuse to buy all that extra crap.

Let's address for a moment the matter of the Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer. Do we really need to eradicate every single germ in our lives? I don't think that's particularly good for us. You know, when I was a kid, we did something really novel when our hands got dirty...we went to the bathroom and used plain soap and water. If we spilled something, we used a damp rag or one of those crappy paper towels from the dispenser in the bathroom. There was no Clorox, no antibacterial soap, no hand sanitizer. And egads! We lived. I think George Carlin makes the best point in the following rant:



Carlin is abolutely right. Our immune system needs practice so that when the next Stephen King-esque superflu comes along, we stand a fighting chance of not having our innards turn into a soupy pus that kills us, okay? Jesus Christ, this is how OCD gets started!

As for the other stuff...do you know what they do with the Ziploc baggies? They stuff the kids' books in them so they can bring them home. You know, when I was a kid, we had a similar device that was just GREAT for storing books. It was called an effin' backpack, pal.

Lord, I wish I had the money to send my kids to private school. I'm so tired of the public school system's atrocious stupidity. Every year, I find myself paying more and more money for a sub-par education. For crying out loud, I'm pretty sure with all the money I'm being forced to fork over, I could probably pay for private tuition easily. Now that I think about it, I'm going to look into it.