‘Tis the Other Season

August is upon us and with it comes the beginning of another school year. Hard to believe summer went by so fast—that’s what we say when making small talk with the other parents waiting in line to purchase washable markers, safety scissors, and non-toxic, eco-friendly (edible) glue required for the first day of classes. It’s beyond my comprehension, but apparently there are people who actually like back-to-school shopping, a baffling fact learned via an episode of that show Discovery Channel airs featuring people afflicted with bizarre compulsions like eating glass or  hording animals. Eh. To each their own.

It’s not that I mind the shopping itself it’s seeing the money wasted year after year on brand new versions of the same gently used items that, not three months ago, the kids carried off the bus on the last day of school. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize having a set of crayons with only sixty-three color variants would prevent you from being admitted to Harvard. I guess after picking them up off the floor fifteen different times over the course of the summer I must’ve lost one. Well, here–let’s get you a full box of sixty-four, and this time, let’s pick the brand name. Nothing but the best for my kids. And, hey, let’s show how compassionate we are by donating that nasty, old box of crayons to the Salvation Army, so poor, indigent families will have something to color with too.  –Oh wait. We are that poor, indigent family.

Something I’ve recently noticed is how soon school supplies start going on sale which, and I’m not kidding, can be within days of the previous year’s end. To me, it almost seems as if retailers are using the same strategy in hawking rulers and lunch boxes as they do with toys and wrapping paper at Christmas: The earlier the better.

Assuming this is the case, that would mean the Christmas and Back-to-School shopping season dominate nearly two-thirds of the calendar year. School shopping, for example, covers June, July and August at which point Christmas picks up with September through December. By default this leaves the remaining months to exist as a sort of holiday version of the doldrums forcing marketers to navigate through a tedious course of minor “special” occasions that fail to generate enough interest beyond a few weeks, thus making them commercially listless by comparison.

Given their present similarities, I wish a shred of Christmas’s festiveness could be injected into school supply season.  For example, school-tide carols sung by the fire would be a nice touch. (“We three rings of Trapper Keeper are / Binding up your homework so far–everybody now!  It was loaded and exploded / Your math worksheets are no more.”) And it just wouldn’t be time for classes to begin without the Charlie Brown Back-to-School Special. Remember? It’s the one where the Peanuts gang huddles around a beat up old pencil box and postulates on society’s consumeristic tendencies, the final indictment of which coming from their teacher who gives a subtle rebuff to companies guilty of intentionally decorating school paraphernalia with such obvious misspellings as school daze and rock starz. “Wah wah wahwah wah wah wah.” Instant classic.

Unlike other event-driven retail opportunities, though, both Christmas and school shopping share a common element that helps sustain their long-term marketability. It’s called “obligation.” Think about it. With the exception of a brief rush at Valentine’s Day, buying gifts and buying school supplies can feel like a forced-march through a labyrinth of shelving-lined aisles while being prodded by a psychological bayonet forged from a reluctant sense of duty.

To me, there is little difference in the motivations driving me to scour stores in search of a Neti Pot intended as a reciprocal present for a distant aunt who sent me the Hickory Farms Holiday Sausages last year, and the hunt for the yellow, three-hole punched, college-rule, five-subject, spiral-ring, letter-size notebook paper with perforated edges as indicated on the list of items required of fifth graders.  It doesn’t matter that Store X just ran out of this particular item after a mob of parents rushed it like a Depression-era bank, not one bit because obligation is a cruel taskmaster that has me running all over town until I do find that damn paper.

Truth be told, a more accurate explanation of this would be to say that I am driven by the fear of looking bad. Just as I never want to be “that guy” who is all take and no give when it comes to holiday gifts, I also don’t want to be “that parent,” i.e. the one who sends their kids off to school completely unprepared, thus incurring their teacher’s scrutiny of my parental abilities or lack thereof. Superficial, I know, but it gets me off the couch.

Even so, I’m also something of a paradox, wrapped within a riddle, buried in a mystery by which I mean this same fear is still not enough to keep me from putting off my shopping during both seasons until the last possible minute, which of course, puts me at risk of being exactly “that guy” or “that parent.” This contrary behavior, I believe, is due in part to an arbitrary notion that sincere focus is bore out of intense panic–the kind of panic one gets after seeing a store’s inventory decimated to post-hurricane levels come December 24th or remembering there’s less than twenty-four hours before my children set foot into a classroom. School’s at least a week a way; I got plenty of time yet. No problem.

In any case, from my family to yours, Season’s Greetings. May your Back to School be merry and bright.