Back to School Shopping

(Don't you just love these irrelevant pictures?
This is a Scottish Highlander Cow over at the fair.)

I am done with school shopping, what with the baby in college and all, and it is not a task that I will miss at all. If I never again have to compete with herds of other harried parents for the last pack of three by five cards in the state or spend money we don't have for expensive gadgets that could be replaced by lined paper and a pencil I will rejoice with hosannas. To never buy another five-inch binder (yeah, I know what they cost) or graphing calculator will make me a very happy woman.

However, a post by my friend Ann, had me remembering just how creative a terminally lazy very busy and harassed mother can be. Three kids, one husband, elderly inlaws, the farm etc. had me at a dead run all through the school years. Band, chorus, 4-H, Dairy Quiz Bowl, Dairy judging, Dairy Ambassadors, who had time to shop? As soon as our kids could count, read, and conceive of spending money (I think Alan might have been nine) we pointed them towards independence by giving them a certain amount of money at the beginning of each frantic fall pen, pencil and over-priced clothing round up. (One year it was two hundred dollars for clothes, books, three by five cards from Hell, calculators etc. Those were the days.......I can't imagine spending that now and am glad I don't have to).

They were then permitted to each take a shopping cart and buy exactly what they wanted-the catch being that it had to go them for the whole school year. If they had money left at the end of their initial shopping session (when the prices are lowest and the crowds most insane) they could put it away for school needs during the ensuing year. If they had any left come summer vacation it was theirs for whatever they wanted.

If the clothes they bought were poorly made or seriously ugly, they had to cope with the consequences. Skimping on things on the class lists brought the teacher down on their heads not mine. (Well actually I put my fingers in my ears and hummed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony while the teachers yelled at me on the phone but the offspring had to come up with a way to fulfill their commitments....)

You might expect that this would be fraught with comedy and tragedy and that they ended up short of needed funds, out of paper and bereft of pens.
It wasn't.
They weren't.
Maybe because they were farm kids and simply had to be practical and independent to get from day to day, they did just fine right from the very first year. Alan and Liz, the practical pair, had money left for summer. Becky the generous might have had to borrow paper from someone half way through the year, but she got by and got to choose clothes that she liked (I shuddered but she was happy).

It worked for me too. I was there in the store to offer advice if requested but I never had to fight over what color or price of notebook or tee shirt. If they wanted top of the line stuff they made do with less...willingly because they got to choose between five notebooks for a dollar or one for five dollars.

Today any one of them can take X number of carefully hoarded dollars to the store and come back with the maximum amount of appropriate products that those dollars can purchase. They can grocery shop for the whole family on an extremely tight budget, buy vehicles, animals, feed, or whatever and the oldest is only 24. I know I was a real mean mom, but most days I am quite glad of it.