School Shopping with Kids is Just as Hellish as it Sounds

by Rachel Toalson | General Blog

Every year in Texas there’s this wonderful weekend where shoppers get to take advantage of tax-free shopping on school supplies and clothes. Hundreds of thousands of people head out in droves, hitting all the local stores and cleaning out school supplies and every rack of clothes those stores possibly have stocked—all within the first three hours of tax-free weekend.

I just love large crowds with all those excited kids who aren’t mine, weaving in and out of the guarantees-an-anxiety-attack-aisles, so, of course, I’m always one of them. Because, you know, tax-free weekend saves me five dollars and forty-seven cents. Totally worth it.

This year my mom offered to take my 3-year-old twins for the weekend so I could take the three going-to-school ones out for a few necessities and a handful of new clothes (because their jeans are now capris).

Strangely enough, I always look forward to this day. It’s sort of a tradition in our house now, the squeezing through sweaty crowds to get that perfect Spider-Man backpack, the yelling at my kids because they picked out five lunch boxes and they only need one, the robot-like explanation (because it’s so oft repeated) that their daddy and I have a thing called a budget, and this little personalized pencil with a neon green zipper bag is not in that budget. And every time tax-free weekend starts creeping up on us, I can’t sleep for days I’m so excited, almost as if I’m shopping for me (I’m not. I haven’t shopped for me in eight years).

Let me just tell you what you probably already know: Shopping with kids is like walking through hell with a checkbook.

And yet, every year I forget the horror that was last year, and I convince myself that this year will surely be different, because the boys are older and more mature, and they understand the whole budget thing and, because of all this, they won’t annoy me twelve seconds after we get to the store.

We started out well, a whole 600 seconds of not-annoying. We stopped first at an arts and crafts store, where we picked out a chalkboard and some chalk markers their daddy could use to hand-letter their morning routines, personalized and artsy (incentive for getting out of bed on school mornings: they get to see art!). They helped me put the chalkboard and chalk pens carefully in the cart, and we headed for the register and paid with little or no fuss beyond their asking if they could please, please, please look at the Beanie Boos, just real quick. Okay, I said, because they were so good.

And then there was Target.

Now. I love Target. It’s the closest department store to my house, so it’s where I get the majority of things like paper towels and toilet paper and replacement toothbrushes after I caught one of the 3-year-old twins trying to scrub-clean the toilet with the existing ones and then putting them all in his mouth (“Look at my teef!” he said, and I threw up a little.).

The first thing they asked when we walked through the sliding doors was whether we could go look at the toys.

Um, no. We’re here for school stuff, I said. We’re on a time budget. And a money budget.

My mom had already bought all the school supplies this year, so all we really needed were a few clothes, some shoes, a backpack and lunch supplies for all of them. We went to the lunch box section first and spied the Thermoses. Two of them already had Thermoses, so we only needed one.

“But I want this one,” said one of the already-have-a-perfectly-fine Thermos boys.

“No,” I said. “You already have one.”

“But look at this one,” he said. “It’s really cool.”

“Well, too bad it wasn’t here last year,” I said and put it back on the shelf.

Half an hour later, when I finally pulled them away from the Thermos shelf, we wheeled over to the backpacks, where three other mothers were wrestling backpacks from their children’s hands.

“Only one,” they were saying.

Oh, God. Here we go.

I leaned against my cart, trying to empathize with all those poor mothers, while my boys pulled every boy-looking backpack off the racks—Transformers, Darth Vader, Batman, Superman, some dog I’ve never seen before, Super Mario Brothers, Spider-Man, Ninja Turtles, everything you could possibly imagine—one after the other falling at my feet.

“Look at this one, Mama!” they would periodically say. “I want this one!”

They knew they were only getting one backpack, so I didn’t feel the need to repeat what we’d already explicitly talked through on the way here. So I just let them bring their choices and said, “Is this the one you want?” and when they said no, I’d hang it back up.

Fast forward another hour, and they had their backpacks stuffed with their lunch boxes and strapped to their backs, because they wanted to carry them instead of putting them in the cart. That lasted about three minutes, and then they tossed them into the cart. Mostly because, right between the school supplies section and the clothes, is the toys section.

Come on, Target. Give a mom a break.

I lost two of the three boys, but by this time, I was already so annoyed and ready to be done I just left them. They knew where we were going. So it was that only one hung to the side of the basket. Until he realized that his brothers were gone. This one got lost one time and gets really scared when any of his brothers disappear, so of course we had to go back to pry his brothers loose from the LEGO aisle.

“Let’s go, guys,” I said. “Not what we’re here for.”

“Can we just get one LEGO set, Mama? To celebrate the start of school?” the 8-year-old said.

He’s clever, but we’ve never “just bought” a LEGO set for any occasion, I said. So no.

They hopped back on the side of the cart, which collectively weighed 130 pounds. Have you ever tried to push a 130-pound cart with a screwy wheel (because I always pick the screwy-wheeled ones, even if the carts are brand new. It’s just a fact of life.)? People kept passing us giving us dirty looks, because we were, after all, on a shopper’s highway, and I was going well below the speed limit, using every muscle in my arms just to turn the corner.

Finally we reached the clothes. This is where it really fell apart.

I don’t even know what happened. I just remember one boy who wears extra small holding up an extra-large and saying he wanted to buy it, and then the boy who wears medium holding up an extra small and saying he wanted this one and then the one who wears small holding up a large, saying this was the one he most definitely wanted to take home, and I had the luxury of telling them all that they’d picked the wrong sizes.

The clothes had already been so picked over we had to compromise greatly. And when I say compromise greatly, I mean no one got what they wanted. The boy who wanted a minion shirt got a Jurassic Park one instead. The boy who wanted Darth Vader got R2D2 instead. The boy who wanted Spider-Man got a minion shirt the other one wanted.

By the time we made it to the sock and underwear aisle, I was done caring. The 8-year-old got a pack of boxer briefs a whole size too large, the 6-year-old picked out some socks he’ll probably regret choosing the first time he wears shorts and realizes how ridiculous he looks in green and blue stripes that come up to his knees. The 4-year-old picked up a package of socks you needed sunglasses to behold.

Oh, well. Lesson learned. Last time I’ll take my kids school shopping with me.

Although, now that I think of it, next year will surely be different, because the boys will be older and more mature, and they’ll understand the whole budget thing and, because of all that, they won’t annoy me 12 seconds after we get to the store.