Dreaded Lists

School supply shopping can be a very
daunting task for mom.

MARL E ES

GOOD FORTUNE SALE
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Roche! Burstyn of Southfield shopping for school supplies with her children:
Yoni, 11, Hadassa Raizel, 10, Avi, 7, and Binyamin, 5 (in the shopping cart).

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Roche! Burstyn

Special to the Jewish News

fists are great ... usually. But now
it's the season for that one list
that inspires fear in my heart
and a whimpering from my checkbook:
the school supply shopping list.
I do not understand these lists.
There are pages and pages of them;
one for the girls, one for the boys, one
for the preschoolers, one for English
studies and one for Hebrew — for
each kid. There's so much on the line
here. Heaven forbid, I should buy the
five-pack dividers when the list clearly
says my child is required to have the
10-pack. Far be it for me to get my child
in his or her teacher's bad books on the
very first day of school.
And why is it my kids need hun-
dreds of dollars' worth of "stuff" when
all I want them to learn is not to be
materialistic? We all know they'll be
coming home with half the supplies
unused a the end of school anyhow.
Yet school can't start without this
dreaded activity. It's nearing the end of
summer vacation and I'm standing in
Target, next to empty bins under big
signs saying, "post-it notes" and "index
cards:' trying to figure out if the six-
pack of erasers is really cheaper than
the three-pack when I really only need
four ...
I'm also trying to figure out the
requirement for mechanical pencils. I
never had mechanical pencils when I
was a kid, and I turned out fine. The
most "mechanical" we got back then
was with an automatic pencil sharpener
— and we thought that was cool. Why

are mechanical pencils necessary? It's
not like my kids are attending a techni-
cal school for hydraulic engineering, in
which case I could understand the need
for more intimidating-sounding pencils
than ones from a regular pack of No. 2
eraser-tipped standards.
A folder is a folder is a folder ...
right? Not in the school-supply aisle.
Some kids need them with prongs,
some without prongs, some with pock-
ets, some pocket-less. Then there's the
1-inch, 11/2-inch, 2-inch. Am I alone
in wanting to shout, "WHO CARES
WHICH FOLDER THE KID USES?!"
And I love the list calling for a "ruler
with metrics" when we don't even use
the metric system in the United States.
Math at its hardest: Is it more effi-
cient if I take the kids shopping with
me or should I brave it alone even
though I'm bound to mess up? Either
way, I'll get to see the expression on my
kids that I gave my mother when she
went shopping for my supplies almost
20 years ago. The expression says, "I
don't know what my teacher meant
when she wrote "assignment book" on
the list either, but I'm sure this extra
spiral notebook is not it:'
It's enough to bring a parent to tears
... which is problematic since we're on
the verge of a tissue shortage because
"four boxes of tissues" is on the school
supply list of every single kid in the
entire country.
I propose a school supplies list that
reads something like this: something to
write with, something to write it on and
somewhere to store it.

Roche) Burstyn lives in Southfield.

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