GEE, TEACHER, HOW ABOUT THE KITCHEN SINK, TOO?

(Ed.'s Note: We used to believe that all you needed for school was paper and pencil and maybe a few crayons and erasers. Well, as you can see from just one elementary teacher's supply list, this ain't your grandma's grade school anymore.

And once you get the basics, there's the "teacher's wish list" on the right for in-class activities, too. We wish the parents of elementary school kids parents the best and advice them to start procuring the supplies now while you have some cash and not wait for the last minute because the stuff will be all picked over. 

If you do, you might be disappointed. Or, rather, your kids might be. Unless, of course, you had one like ours.)

By Juan Montoya

Years ago, when we still had one kid – our youngest girl –  at Hudson Elementary when Dr. Rita Hernandez was principal there, it fell on my lot to go shopping for school supplies a day before the school year began.

This was always an unpleasant task and I always left it for the last minute and you would invariably find yourself pawing through piles of left over pencils, composition books, rulers, folders, dividers, etc. to try to get everything on the list the teachers ask parents to get for their students.

That was bad enough.

But when you consider that you are trying to do this against other desperate parents who procrastinated like you and find themselves trying to scratch off every last item from their list, it becomes a pitched battle on the school supply pile at stores like Walmart, Kmart when there was one, the Family Dollars, Target, etc. by parents with their back against the wall by an inexorable clock and the fast-approaching deadline.

The moms were the worse. They weren't above edging past you in the line and pushing you aside as they grabbed for that missing three-hole binder (had to be black), or the safety scissors they needed for their list.

To make the long story short, as 10 p.m. approached, things were getting desperate. Still unscratched on the list were two blue and red erasers. Everywhere I went, they had an eraser of one color, or some other types, some of them with a small brush at one end, and instead of the lead, it was an eraser point like a pencil.

I gave up after the stores started closing and the elusive erasers were nowhere to be found. I had failed.

This had never happened before and I arrived at the house with my different bags from the different stores bulging over with supplies. But no double-color gum erasers.

The little one was at the living-room coffee table drawing something on a paper with crayons when I arrived. She looked up and saw the supplies looking at me expectantly as she filled in her drawing with a crayon. There was no way out. I fessed up, a bit defensive, even as I tried to hide my exasperation.

"Nana, it took me half the night and I got everything on the list except for one thing, those erasers with the two colors, you know, the red and the blue. I went to the four Walmarts and everything is gone. Then I went to the Target, the Family Dollars, all of them. There are no two-sided erasers left in the city. I'm sorry."

God made little girls different.

She eyed at me somewhat distractedly, looked up from her creation and said: "Erasers? Oh, don't worry about that Dad. I just won't make any mistakes."

(Nana [short for "hermana" because her brothers couldn't pronounce it] starts her freshman year at UTRGV this year. Those are the type of uneraseable memories I have of my kids. Hope you make some, too.)