School is Cool, Stay in School

It is an odd feeling to be around the college you just graduated and not be part of the process of getting ready for another fall semester. I am starting to see people trickling in to buy their books and renew their mailboxes and a part of me misses the ritual and excitement of getting ready for another year of school. Probably the greatest excitement of all for me over the last 16 or so years of eduacation had to have been shopping for school supplies. There was nothing quite like having mom take me to Target to buy pencils and binders. Yes, Target was my store of choice though I know there are those of you out there who had mothers who took you to WalMart or perhaps a convenience store or perhaps even to another family's house where she would just drop you off and leave you there, hoping that family would buy you school supplies or maybe just take you in and take care of you because she really wants to bang that new guy at the strip club but she can't bring him home when you have to share one bedroom and you cost so fucking much money that she can't afford to get a new apartment so you're really killing her social life. Anyway, MY mom took me to Target. At Target most of the school shit you bought was boring and inconsequential, like pencils and sharpeners with which to sharpen. I remember that early in elementary school teachers wouldn't allow kids to do their classwork in pen, you had to use pencil because you would mess up so many times trying to write a cursive Z. Then there was that day, probably like 3rd or 4th grade, where the teacher was like "Pens? I don't a give a shit. Knock yourself out" and so you just used pens for everything even if it was detrimental and you'd have to start over on your multiplication tables because your OCD wouldn't let you scratch-out the numbers on your sheet. Anyway, the pencils and pens were the boring stuff. Rarely did mom allow me to get the cool writing utensils; that is why to this day all the pencils and pens I own are of the finest craftsmanship. I have a pen that cost $100. My spending habits are my mom's fault for being cheap during school shopping when I was a kid.

What mom did allow me to buy on occasion was the infamous badass folder. The badass folders were the opposite of the Lisa Frank folders that had a blue unicorn riding a pink dolphin through the ocean on the way to the strawberry patch. The badass folders had various things that meant "cool" to a ten year-old boy. The badass folders that I hold in the fondest regards were ones that had various sports balls being thrashed by wild animals. I remember a bull slicing up a football and an alligator eating the shit out of a soccer ball. Those folders were badass.

I don't know what is cool to have for school nowadays. I think they are Yu-Gi-Oh cards or something. When I observe my younger cousins they are more concerned with skateboards and t-shirts than clothing items, so it could be that ever since Abercrombie and Fitch opened a store for kids they offically put a bullet through the back of the head of the Lisa Frank empire. No longer will her folders dictate the flow of the elementary school social slipstream.