A touch of housekeeping before I dive into this: I set a personal record this morning for the fastest time I’ve ever fled a PD session, leaving after the keynote address, which was basically a very nice and funny man going “Man, teachers are cool, aren’t they?” I left because apparently having a few hundred teachers in the building to learn stuff wasn’t enough of a reason to turn the fucking air conditioning on in the building, and I was sweating like a pig and I really needed eyedrops from my car and when I got to my car I found it impossible to get back out and go back into the building.

Do other careers do this? Do lawyers need to get together every now and again to get a rah-rah speech about how cool and important lawyering is? Do venture capitalists work in buildings where basic things like environmental control are hosted off-site and not accessible to the people who actually work there? No, right? It’s no.

Can we talk about school supplies, just for a minute? I had a whole rant I went into about this at dinner tonight, and part of the reason I have this site is so that when I feel compelled to rant about something or another it lands here and not on my family, and I broke that rule tonight. The problem, of course, is that now a lot of the venom is exorcised and I don’t necessarily need to write the post. Nonetheless! Let me provide you with a few pieces of advice, for those of you buying school supplies for your kids:

• Yes, you are responsible for buying supplies for your own kids, the same way you’re responsible for food and clothing for them. Yes, the school is funded with tax money. Yes, you pay taxes. Would you like that dollar back? Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
• Many teachers, myself included, keep large amounts of school supplies on hand for kids who for whatever reason don’t have them, and this is absolutely not a wealth thing. However! The very second you imply that I personally am responsible for providing your child with school supplies, your child loses access to anything I pay for and bring to work. This is irrevocable unless you personally apologize. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
• Some teachers are very picky about school supplies! There are probably reasons. Some, but not all, of those reasons may be good ones! Ask them.
• If your kid’s school is picky about school supplies, however, it’s probably because the school secretary is sick and fucking tired of parents asking what kind of pencils they are supposed to bring and so now the supply list says “Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils” and not “Pencils.” Whatever pencils your kid has will be fine. Whatever paper your kid has will be fine, although do pay attention if a particular teacher asks for loose-leaf, because those little torn edges are annoying as fuck.
• I have literally never encountered a school that asked for Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils and actually got uppity about some other pencil. I would love to hear about it if it happens, and you’re within your rights to complain about it. Politely.
• Some teachers (hi!) are going to shrug and say something like “they need something to write with and something to write on.” Others will be more picky. Guess what? Teachers are human, and policies vary from class to class, because there are different humans running those classes. Again, ask, and if a teacher says they don’t really care or doesn’t specify a list, just make sure you kid is prepared to take some notes. That’ll probably be good enough.
• Some teachers will not have lists at all! Sometimes we just got our job four days ago. Sometimes we haven’t thought about it yet. You’ll be okay. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
• Some things are going to be communal! If you don’t like it, eat a gallon of ass and homeschool your kid. That box of tissue paper isn’t just for your child. If you are upset because little Jimmy got the real expensive colored pencils and you don’t want the dirty poors touching his pencils, if you think that’s communism, find a bridge and jump off because your kid is better without a parent who ego trips about school supplies. I mean this genuinely and with all my heart. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
• If you saw a supply list at Wal-Mart or whatever, be aware that no one at the school knows where the hell that list came from, and no one at the school has any idea that that list even exists. That list got made up on the spot and sent over by a secretary twelve years ago and they’ve been photocopying it every August ever since, and there is not a single person at your child’s school that knows anything about it or can do anything about it.
• That said! You already know what the basics are. Buy those– paper, pencils, a couple of notebooks, some hand sanitizer and tissue paper, maybe some markers or colored pencils or crayons depending on your kids’ age. Again, nobody is really as picky as these lists indicate. Your constant stupid questions made us this way.
• There is one exception to this rule: if your child is of middle school age, or otherwise is expected to travel from class to class while carrying their materials, do not buy them a pencil box. Buy them a pencil bag. Pencil boxes are for kids young enough to have their own desks that things can be stored in. Why? Because if you drop a pencil bag, it hits the floor and goes splat and maybe if it’s unzipped a pencil might fall out. If you drop a pencil box on the floor it will explode, and your kid’s shit will go everywhere, and because passing period is chaos and middle school students are savages, your kid’s stuff will quickly be kicked to the four corners of the universe and your kid will die of embarrassment on the spot.
• This is what I mean when I say unreasonable-seeming specificity can sometimes have a good reason. Please do not buy middle schoolers pencil boxes.

This is what happened after the dinner rant, y’all.

And for the last time this school year, my Amazon supply wish list is here if you are willing and able to be generous.