Day 113

It is possible my sense of humor is doing long term damage to my kids.   After a recent inquiry about school supplies one night at dinner, I jokingly told my kids that this year, I was going to send them to school with chalk board and chalk and they actually started crying.   Well, one of them did, the first grader is still blissfully unaware and though chalk sounded kinda fun.

The tools of learning

School supplies have been on my mind quite a bit lately.

As far as school is concerned, there are things you can opt out of, and things you can’t.  For instance, we could opt out of buying the school yearbook last year, school spirit T-shirt and Scholastic books.    But, even during the Simple Year we were still on the hook for the tools of learning.

Many wasted brain bytes and  it turned out that school supplies really weren’t even an issue due to a couple of serendipitous events.  The first was that we were invited to a Back to School Picnic for the families of deployed soldiers.  I read the picnic email and had my finger hovering over the delete key, until I spied the last line, “Kids will get a backpack filled with school supplies to start the new year.”

We were so there.

Also, a friend of mine who was visiting bought them a bunch of stuff while I was at work.  She and I share many of the same qualities, that is something I would have done in her place.  My kids were ecstatic, I was secretly relieved.

So basically what I am publicly admitting is that we didn’t buy our own supplies, someone else bought them for us.  It’s a fine line, I know and not offering any real reduction in our footprint.    In my defense, I did manage to reuse a few items we had from last year (pencil case, rulers etc).  The few things they still needed to fill out their list I deemed consumable so I actually bought. I tried to go with recycled paper options which, oddly, are about four times the price as the fresh stuff.

Why is that? 

Why is it cheaper to chop down a tree, make it into pulp and smash it into paper than it is to dig something out of a recycling bin, make it into pulp and smash it into paper?  At the very least, it seems like they would be comparable in price.

But, again, I digress.

Here was the actual problem I encountered.  Between the two kids, the school supply manifesto decreed we have a total of 108 SHARPENED pencils.  In hindsight, I should not have waited until about four hours before they were due at school to begin sharpening them.

Let the sharpening commence

About 30 pencils in the sharpen-y thing in the sharpener dislodged itself and lost it’s fine point making  ability.  It was now gnawing them into a dome shape that looked like it might one day aspire to be an actual writing implement.

Since the list didn’t say 108 dull pencils,  I took the sharpener apart.  Well actually, after removing all of the screws, it still would not open so I did what anyone would do and wedged it open with a butter knife.  At that point, it sort of exploded in my hands with all of the pieces randomly laying about.  So, I spent about 30 minutes trying to fit Cog A into Wheel B and finally gave up and figured I’d tell the teachers we were going to have to bring the pencils in installments.

Sharpener surgery

So, at some point in the beginning of the Simple Year, I said I was going to buy used things, do without or REPAIR them.  To date, I have repaired exactly—NOTHING.  I have tried, and I have paid people to repair things.  But, I personally have not been able to fix anything.

So, 113 days into this project I appear to be coming to the self-realization that I am not handy which might be problematic.

Anyway, when we dropped the supplies off, both teachers said they had plenty of pencils.  Don’t worry about it, which underscores how being unprepared can often work to one’s advantage.   Now we have 78 unsharpened pencils  to add to our hoard here.  Perhaps we can build something out of them…