Eighty-five dollars later, I pull into my driveway in a car with a broken air-conditioner.
The puppy has been locked up all day. It's raining so much I look like Carrot Top. I just took advantage of the state tax-free holiday to shop for school supplies. I spent $85, saving maybe $5.
Eighty-five dollars.
Composition notebooks so my daughter can learn to write badly in this era of FCAT formulas. Red pens so she'll write even worse.
Spiral notebooks. Folders, folders, folders and more folders, to hold worksheets that take the place of actual books. A new backpack for my son, who would rather use the old one.
A pocket-sized dictionary for my 10-year-old daughter. Will she crack it open this year?
Eighty-five dollars.
The list includes paper towels and tissues - no tax break as these are not exactly school supplies. These are for the classroom.
I'm also on the hook for two reams of copy paper. I don't know why. I guess the school can't afford any, so they hit up the parents. Is that because the state is so cheap? The paper cost $5, at least. Does that make us even from the tax break?
They're cutting back on potatoes at lunch. Do they think kids will eat school salad?
They're hiring a collection agency to go after deadbeat lunch accounts.
Wait a minute.
Two years ago school officials figured out that, with the incentives they got for feeding more children, it was more economical to give away breakfast than sell it. If breakfast is cheaper for free, how is lunch a cash cow?
There are nine kindergarten classes in the school. Nine!
A few years back, we got rid of portable classrooms. They were the scourge of public education, a monument to our collective neglect.
Then along came the class size amendment, and up went a new generation of portables. Nine kindergarten classes.
Eighty-five dollars. And that doesn't include uniforms. The brainchild of a feel-good president (Clinton) and a lot of prim principals. They look so nice!
So my kids have to wear these stiff garments and change into play clothes on days when I take them to soccer practice. Gotta have them in soccer. Gotta do something about all that candy, and years and years of school potatoes. With each new portable, they lose more of the playground. Soccer cuts into homework time, but it tears them away from the television. So again, we're even.
They speak in their own vernacular, my children. I don't give a care. Is that colloquial? Or uniquely theirs?
They know nothing about history. If my daughter cracks open her new dictionary voluntarily, it will be the first time, ever, and she's graduating from elementary school.
Eighty-five dollars.
In the store we run into my son's third-grade teacher. She's got a cartful of assorted merchandise. "People take things from my classroom," she confides, embarrassed for these people, whoever they are.
And it would be one thing if they were walking off with money and computers.
No, she says, they take her cleaning supplies.
How can my kids possibly be learning anything, when people at their school don't even know how to steal properly?
Eighty-five dollars. Add Windex to the list.
A day later I'm out another $850 to an auto mechanic. It's still raining. And the car continues to blow hot air.
But the kids are back at school, where perhaps they will learn something useful, like how to beg, borrow and steal.
