Back to School Sale

Not attended school in a long time, yet each summer's Back to School sales promotions with in-store displays captures my attention.  It usually gets a small portion of my money.  Lest I emerge as a senior relic, past my IRA's Required Minimum Distribution age, the AARP itself acknowledges this special retail season.  My children have careers.  Their children are infants.  No schools to attend, not for me, not for my descendants.  Yet, stationery and office supplies have always not only captivated me, but gave excuses to find homes for things I didn't need, and won't need.

Right now, my desk displays stick pens in multiplle colors, some click pens.  Pencils both mechanical and wood.  Two cartridge pens.  Three zipper loose-leaf binders.  I use some of these, not others, yet I've always had a fascination with pens.  Pharmaceutical representatives once distributed them to me in quantity, always with the logo of something they wanted me to prescribe stamped to the barrel.  Some were even mid-end in quality.  I use three bound notebooks regularly.  One tracks my Daily Annoyance, one three Daily Achievements, the third my exercise progress.  My desk has things I do not use.  Rulers.  A slide rule of another era.  Two three-hole punch devices to adapt plain paper for a three-ring binder.  I have typing paper.  Art supplies.  Pocket folders, some with clips, others just the pockets, some from stores, others harvested from meetings I previously attended, serve some useful purpose.  Clips and rubber bands get used, though more in the kitchen than in My Space.  I keep three razor edged letter openers, but do not open envelopes at my desk.  Instead, I use them to take copier paper and slice each sheet in half to create each day's Task List.

So while not in school, and not under pressure to appear stylish, each summer I check out the displays.  The process of resupply has changed considerably.  Sunday newspaper ads no longer arrive.  My favorite stores for stocking up have liquidated.  I could always enter a Christmas Tree Shoppe in August and find a few things to take to their register.  Target remains active.  While the store's chain has swooned with little that I want to purchase, each summer they stock their seasonal section in the way back of their stores with yellow bins.  I can expect teaser prices on pens of some type, yellow pencils, marble books, spiral books.  I anticipate needing a new spiral book next month.  Walmart also promotes heavily.  It can be a treasure hunt.  Among my favorite pens were there mulit-color package of Magnatank liquid gel pens.  Only the purple remains, the other lost to use or leakage.  Apparently sales or user feedback did not justify Walmart maintaining them.  Perhaps they still exist on eBay.  I could always use more dry-erase  markers, as my two whiteboards have become productivity and scheduling hubs. There only the Expo brand will suffice, preferably with the thin barrel.  And I can never have too many Bic hi-liter pens in multiple colors.

What advertising still exists also promotes Back to College.  When I designed My Space, I sought to create the dorm room that I could never afford to have.  Color TV, stereo, comfortable reading chair, swivel desk chair, optimal desk lighting.  I spent a little extra on this, though my stereo is a low-end retro without turntable, and my recliner a major disappointment, offset by being better off not occupying it too much at the expense of desk work.  Target and Boscov's supply the college crowd.  Mini-fridges, storage items, irons, coffee makers, small microwaves, stylish backpacks.  I have my optimally stocked house with all the things I need to function.  Big refrigerator, Keurig machine, high-end iron, built-in closets.  My Space has elements of a dorm, but the rest of my house does not.

Fortunately, most of what I now purchase over the summer classifies as consumable, even if I do not wear much of it out.  It takes a long time to deplete the ink of a Bic Cristal, though I succeed with the black one about once a year.  Highlighters last until they dry out.  Pencil cases sort my writing implements by type.  Paper seems inexhaustible, other than notebooks which get filled up.

While I have enough supplies, I anticipate buying some more, looking for discounts.  I don't really need or crave any.  Instead, the Back to School season announces a reset, even though my renewal time has been the medical world's July 1 rather than Labor Day.  The close of summer still has its reset.  The Holy Days.  Resumption of OLLI.  Football.  Target and Walmart and The Christmas Tree Shoppe z"l have all convinced me to stay ready.