Back to School Already?

7/13/2014

What do I love about commerce?  I love the way store owners, catalogs, newspaper ads, etc. get on the "back to school" wagon so early.  In truth, school has only been out for about a month or so and I'm pretty sure the last thing a kid wants to think about is new pencils and notebooks.  Parents, on the other hand, see a sale and are likely to buy in advance while the selection of school items is vast.

Heaven knows you don't want to be the parent who comes home with a "Hello Kitty" notebook for a high schooler because that's all you could find.  Horrors.  Stores still sell notebook paper, but are kids really using paper that much anymore?  More likely, they sit at their computers, do their research, type up the assignment and hit print.  When I was growing up in the dark ages, kids went through notebook paper much like they do toilet paper - lots!

School supplies isn't the only thing that's being hammered into our heads already.  Stores are advertising the latest fashion fads for both young children as well as the teens.  Buying school clothes for the boys was really pretty simple - jeans and shirts.  As the boys got older and times changed, they didn't wear buttoned shirts to school anymore, t-shirts became the "go to" thing to wear.   As the boys got older, they wanted t-shirts that had some kind of decoration, if you can call it that.  I drew the line at any shirt that was sending some kind of hurtful or degenerative statement.

Teenagers want to fit in, so logo's of fashion designers are always in.  Unfortunately, for the parents the cost of that lovely polo logo of Ralph Lauren's means you're spending a whole lot of bucks on a shirt.  And a shirt that isn't going to be worn probably more than one season because of teenager's growth cycles.

When I was a teenager, my mother made all of my clothes.  She was very handy with the sewing machine and I had very pretty clothes to wear.  But, what I really wanted, was to buy something off the rack so that I would, in my opinion, be cool!

Going way back to the 60's, girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school.  The only exception was in the dead of winter in Illinois, girls could wear pants underneath their dresses to school and then remove them before their first class.  Oh we have definitely come a long way.

Since I no longer have school age children, I just toss aside all the ads that are school related.  I love to write, so I still indulge myself in very good pens.  No Bic Clic's for me.  When I find a pen that writes well, then I make sure that I have a stash, so I never run out of ink!

P