If you’re a regular church-goer, or a frequent reader of my columns, you’ve already heard some of my Ecclesiastes excerpts.
There is a time to renew your licence (on your birthday), seasonal times to do something with your car tires (November and April), a time to get a replacement vehicle (when your current one too often leaves you stranded on the 401, or on a remote logging road in Northern Ontario).
This is the time of year when each child going back to school somehow needs a completely new and different set of school supplies. There’s the compass (no, not the wilderness travel one), the one most often used to poke holes rather than explore the intricacies of Euclidian geometry. Then there’s the slide rule. I didn’t go far in trigonometry. I barely got beyond using it as a straight edge to surreptitiously draw ships and airplanes at the back of the classroom.
I’m sure there are some parents who refuse to bend to the tradition of what some children going back to school plead, such as, “This year I gotta have a new 3-ring binder, a new pencil case, a new ruler and a new bookbag!”
Pity the child whose absolutely rigid mom says, “Everything you had last year is what you’re going back to school with this year!”
Picture the poor kid who has to endure the ridicule from his grade two or grade XII classmates, or even his third-year university course in mediaeval music. Every September, for up to fifteen years (8 + 4 +3 = 15) he’d hear the taunts. “Look at what that poor kid is still using!”
Suppose Mom has finally given in and decided to bring Junior’s school kit out of the late Twentieth Century. Dragging her feet, with August’s box store back to school flyer in hand, the specials on 3-ring binders, pencil cases, rulers and bookbags have been circled. Excited Junior can’t hold back his glee of anticipation.
Alas, disappointment awaits them. Since this DWW’s publication date is September 7, it’s already too late to get any school supplies. The shelves are now groaning with Hallowe’en stuff, and winter’s snow shovels are arriving at the logistics centre.
