Silver Bullets

What's your silver bullet?

The very thing that never fails to put you in a better mood? The thing that, though you have enough of it already, you are always happy to have more of?

I had a friend who asked this question once, in a quest for the "silver bullet gift" for women in general. His was a fool's quest, I think, because the whole point of a silver bullet is that it's individualized and cannot be generalized.

He said, no, this can't be true because men have a general silver bullet, that being anything sold in a hardware store.

Oh come on. That can't be true. I'm married to a hardware store kind of guy and if I wrapped up a bottle of Gorilla Glue for his birthday one year, he'd look at me askance.

Am I right to think each person has his or her own silver bullet? Probably. I'll leave it up to the comments section to correct or validate me. But let's get back to business, namely, my silver bullet:

Stationary supplies.

Pens. Paper. Variations of these.

Love them.

My favorite birthday gift of all time was from my 9th, when Mom gave me a Hello Kitty pencil case, fully loaded with goodies from the Hello Kitty store. I still have it, and one day, I'll pass it on to Gemma, who seems to really like stationary, too.

Given all this, you know why this is one of my favorite times of year: School Supply Sales! YAY!!!!

On Saturday, when I was still feeling yucky, had enough umph to get off the couch but not enough to exercise, per se, I took myself to Target to smell the Crayola aisle and fondle the boxes of Pilot gel pens and flip through the stacks of blank notebooks.

Ah. . . 24 count boxes of crayons for a quarter. It would have hurt me not to buy several. I loaded up, too, on little kid scissors, which have a way of going missing throughout the year. Threw in enough glue sticks to last until the sale next year at this time. Watercolor paints, too. Not on sale right then, but this is what the festive season does to me.

Here I was, kind of getting some exercise by being out and about, in a thoroughly good mood because that's what silver bullets do to you, and then I tuned into the parents and kids around me.

They were shopping for school supplies. The kids were universally glad to be about this business. The way they selected a box of crayons out of a huge bin of identical boxes. The way they chose carefully between the pink, blue or green supply holders. The way they lobbied with tepid eagerness for 24 count colored pencils over the 12.

And why the trepidation with their parents? Because pens were not their parents' silver bullet. Overheard, only variations of this theme: Let's get this over with. Shut up and let me concentrate. I'm trying not to spend any more money than I possibly have to. I can't believe I have to spend this much money just to send my kid off to school.

It was kind of heartbreaking.

And I'm on a LOT of drugs now. So it's not my fault that I nearly broke into tears.

It is my fault that I'm now writing about it. But maybe all of you are the good guys who agree with me in this and shake your head--for shame!--at these other parents.

What I was thinking was this: How much money do you waste on your child throughout the year????? And now you're going to whine about buying him new school supplies? The stuff he's going to bring with him for the coming year of free education that tax-payers are giving him?

Here your kid is, very excited to be getting new stuff. He's feeling the potential in those un-sharpened pencils. He's really digging the lime green binder he's picked out and he's looking forward to filling it with clean, lined notebook paper. And instead of celebrating that, and cultivating the enthusiasm, and marking this as a very happy day in preparation for a very important First Day of School, you are complaining.

And then you'll spend that much money on his hot lunches before the first quarter is even over. Yeah, we all have bills to pay, and other places we'd rather spend our money. But this is school. When a kid starts complaining about it a few weeks down the road, maybe it'd be helpful to have not given her an example to start out with.

I toodled away from the supply aisle. Picked out a cap to wear on my bald head that should emerge in T minus 2 weeks or so. Bought several bottles of hand sanitizer with the intention of turning my entire family into germophobes for the coming flu season. And by the time the cashier rang up all my silver bullets, I was feeling pretty good again.