Back to school blues

For the many of you out there that have children going back to school this time of year, I congratulate you on surviving another summer vacation. The television will have a chance to cool off, the door will not open and slam repeatedly, and someone else will have to watch your kids for a few hours a day. All these things are great, but you also survived back to school shopping, then I am really impressed.
The parents all flock to Wal-mart for the most part, and if you follow the noise and the smell of the crowd, you will find the back to school section. A jumble of carts marks off the section, like a police barricade. This is caused by school shoppers that have left their carts behind because the aisles are so packed with people looking for supplies, that they couldn’t fit the cart down the aisle without resorting to physical violence.
With the list in your hand you look at the supply list and dutifully get everything your child (or children) will need this year. I remember back in the day that my list used to be much shorter. A few notebooks (no spirals), pencils, pens, an eraser, and a ruler...and that’s about it. Third grade has gotten a lot more challenging since those days, at least the shopping part has. Graph paper, color coded folders, a specified number of markers..etc.
The teacher that made the list I was using apparently wanted to make school shopping more fun for all the kids in his/her class. Let’s see, 32 crayons. They make them in 24 and 48 packs at Wal-mart, I guess I will have to get 48 crayons, and hope this kid can do math. It was also specifically asked to get a white folder. (More on that in just a minute.)
So in this steamy, shrieking mother and burnt out father swamp of shopping you have people trying to all find the same thing. No one can find the graph paper, have you seen the graph paper? No I haven’t seen the graph paper, I am looking for it too. Pretty soon about ten of us are looking for graph paper.
That’s when some poor girl named Becky walks near the back to school section, and gets swarmed by teeth gnashing shoppers. Take us to the graph paper! Take us now or suffer! The angry school of sharks chants as they swarm poor Becky.
With fear that if she doesn’t find us graph paper that we will kill her and hide her remains somewhere in housewares, she leads us to a spot where the graph paper is hidden behind 2 boxes of Superman folders. The crowd falls to their knees and thanks God for having Becky lead them to the graph paper and begins to squeal and howl in unison. Becky quickly runs for her life before someone else asks for help.
On an end note, everything was found at the end of the shopping run. Everything that is except... the dreaded white folder.
Apparently this teacher not only likes to color code his folders, but also gets some evil satisfaction having people look for something that probably doesn’t exist. The required white folder is the Bigfoot of the school supply kingdom. No one has seen one, but many believe they exist. Going to Wal-mart, Target, Office Max, and Walgreens I have learned that they don’t exist at least without buying a set of 10.
So the kid got a folder with a picture of a dog on it that was sort of white and a note that said, "Sorry, I couldn’t find a white folder, I hope your teacher doesn’t mind this one." Well if he complains they won’t find him at least until someone actually goes back to housewares.