How to survive the back to school mayhem without blowing your budget, losing your mind or subjecting your children to socially devastating errors of style or omission

Anyone?

  

Comments

[nthnglsts]

Well, by now they should have jobs.... and if you don't interact with them on Facebook or My Space then you don't exist anyway so no danger of style errors.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

I exist as the 16-digit account number called Mommy's Visa. Which the people at Office Depot have probably memorized. The errors of style are only narrowly averted by the 11-year-old's intuitive sense that sale notebooks are "social suicide."

[Executive Suburbanite]

Mine also has an uncanny ability to avoid sale-priced merchandise. We insisted she bypass the $7 binders and go for the $3 shelf. She managed to pick out two binders that had been mis-shelved -- yup, $7.

[Paulita]

It doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy, it will be wrong. One tip I found with my teenage boys, the things they absolutely have to have is not really necessary if you insist they come to the store with you. My boys would rather pull out their fingernails than accompany me to the store.

[Audubon Ron]

I didn't have kids for this very reason...and because I'd over compensate for shit that happened in my childhood. Like, I had to walk to school five miles, barefoot in the swamp. I’d get my kids a monster truck.

[Audubon Ron]

PS: It makes me sad that you think you only exist as a 16 digit number. Really sad. Damn, I’m bummed.

[Jane]

All I know is I went to every store in this stupid retail-deprived town and still couldn't find the right binder. But by god I wasn't driving 4 hrs to Chicago to find the right one. Devastation.

[Gina Stratos]

In a word ... Vodka