“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
-Joe Fox played by Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail”
August is fast approaching and that means school is almost here. I know many of you are still in the clutches of summer, wringing out every last drop of sunshine, but once the calendar turns to August 1st, the reality is Autumn is around the corner. And that means shopping for new school supplies. Are you ready?
I have always loved shopping for school supplies. While I had my backpack, lunchbox, one notebook and pencil on the first day of school, the actual buying of school supplies wouldn’t happen until I got home from school that day.
On the first day of school, my teacher handed out our textbooks and we obediently added our names in the front left inside cover. I never had a new textbook and would add my name below that of a child from the year before. Some of my textbooks were so old, that my name would no longer fit on the prescribed lines, and I would write my name 12 or 15 lines down without a line to guide the levelness of my signature. It was always exciting finding a sibling’s name or that of their friends above my name.
The teacher would then write out the supplies needed for the year on the blackboard, and I would dutifully copy it in my assignment pad. It was the only homework for the night. Woo hoo!
When I arrived home from school, my mother would take my brothers and me to Zeskands, a family-owned school and office supply store a few blocks from my house. You must remember, this was the generation before online shopping and Staples. There would be pandemonium at the store as my public school easily held 1,000 students. I would scurry to find a folder that no one else had (at least I would tell myself it was unique. Reality was many would have the same folder as we all shopped at Zeskands).
Today, my kids’ supply lists are listed on their school websites over the summer. Gone is the excitement and chaos of back-to-school shopping. I miss the smell of the paper, the squiggle of pen shopping to find the perfect, most comfortable writing instrument, and the madness at checkout. (There were no aisles at Zeskands as the store was very small. It resembled the Wall Street trading pits of the 1980s.) I miss saving the paper bags from Waldbaums (my local supermarket) to make the make-shift covers for our textbooks. My dad would insist on this. We needed to leave our textbooks in the same, if not better condition for the next child who would add their name below mine in the coming years.
Maybe I am nostalgic, but I still get the butterflies in my stomach when shopping for school supplies. I am giddy and wanted to share some of the fun supplies I found to supplement my kids’ lists.
Hope you too are getting excited. The time for a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils is right around the corner.
Check out the link here for some school supply accessories to add to your list.
You may also enjoy some of my office product finds, listed here.
2 Responses
Although I’m not shopping for school supplies just the name Zeskands brought back many fond memories.
Glad to tickle the fancy of your mind. I miss the experience and was so sad to see Zeskands shuttered after so many decades.
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