Walmart Supplies Your Every Need

It's already time to shop for school supplies!

That's CRAZY talk, you say!

What's even more crazy, is that I decided to buy the supplies myself this year. Our schools have this great thing where you go on "supply day" and purchase everything in one nice convenient pre-packaged bundle. In the elementary schools, you don't even have to bring them home. They just send the supplies straight to your child's classroom and you never have to deal with them at all. But as a kid, I always loved buying my school supplies and I was feeling a little nostalgic over picking out my own pencils and scissors. Man, am I dumb.

We went to Wally, of course, and I have to say, I got out much cheaper than the pre-packaged price. Or at least, in theory, I would have gotten out much cheaper. However, as everyone knows, sanity is temporarily suspended when you walk through the doors of Walmart-world.

Normally I like to take John shopping because he's agreeable, and enjoys looking and browsing and touching and sniffing and admiring all things with price tags. While Melee' is a typical male hunter-gatherer, he wants to know what's on the list, exactly. And he wants you to give him an ETA for arriving back at the house. He immediately starts whining and carrying on when you deviate from the plan in any way. And while John's shopping style is more my own, it also carries with it the potential for unending requests for more, more, more.

"Can I get these poly-folders? The ones I got yesterday didn't have brads."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, I don't think they did. Are you 100% sure they did?"
"No, but we were going by the list, right?"
"Yea, but I don't think they had brads."
"How much are those?"
"A dollar forty-three."
"What? The ones we got yesterday were twenty-nine cents!"
"But I don't think they had brads, and what if we get home and find out they don't? Then you're just gonna have to come back and get more."
"Fine. But don't ask me for anything else, you're done."

Two minutes later.

"Can I get one of these composition books?"
"For what?"
"To write in."
"To write what in?"
"You know. Stuff. Like when I'm home and I want to write something, I can write it in this."
"That wasn't on your list."
"Just, you know, like a journal."
"I gave you a journal. That flowered one I used to have. You never use it."
"It doesn't have lines. This one has lines."
"It's not on the list."
"It's only fifty cents."
"You don't need a journal, I can't even get you to write for school."
"Mom, it's fifty cents."
"No. I said no."
"Fifty cents."
The death stare.
"Okay, okay..."

And in the background Melee' is picking up packages of 96 crayons and two hundred count map pencils and electric pencil sharpeners, all in an effort to get me the hell out of the store before I become distracted by something that is not a school supply. I, in turn, have to go and dig out all the things from the basket that were not on the list and backtrack through the isle to get the 16 count crayons, the twelve pack of map pencils and the ninety-four cent pencil sharpener.

I picked up a new lunch bag for Peach as hers got torn last year. Some trash bags and paper towels, because I was out ... and then I got distracted. Some new permanent markers for me, I really need them, I'll use them all year, and the ones I have are starting to run out and the kids have lost some of my colors. And then I found the computer game chairs. All the while Melee' complaining and whining because this wasn't on the list, and simultaneously stopping every three steps to tell John "No. Because I said so."

A hundred and forty seven dollars later, I stalk out of Wally-world with my unflatened hair flying around in a fuzzy mess. Irritated beyond my limits and feeling like a failure with the need to go to confession for not abiding by the homily of the day "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." I wonder if Deacon Pat's available to go shopping with me and my kids?