An open letter to retailers

An open letter to retailers:

Hello out there – anyone listening to the consumers?  I DO NOT want to buy markers and notebooks and backpacks in July!!!!!  I don’t want to see them in your flyers, littering my mailbox with unwanted thoughts of the back to school madness.  Your one day only sales that pressure me into buying things long before class lists are ready because now I am wondering: if you are doing this in July does that mean it will all be gone by late August and I will be facing isles of Christmas wreaths and Menorahs when instead I need protractors and pencil cases?

Why when teachers and parents and children have just started to dig toes into sand dunes, are busy splashing in pools, and summer camp has just kicked off for the season, do you think for any reason that we want to be lining up for crayons and calendars?
Do you know what I want to buy now?  Bathing suits and flip-flops and fun things that float in the water.  You know – all the things that are harder to find IN THE SUMMER than Jimmy Hoffa’s body. PLEASE  – stop forcing the seasons to change months ahead of time.  Let us, the poor consumers, have a rest.  Let us enjoy the sunshine and saltwater for the brief time it lasts.

Trust me, we will be back – we love your ten-cent pencil cases.   But we don’t love them until school starts.

Sincerely your very tired and in desperate need of a break from your onslaught of marketing gimmicks (and in need of sunscreen and a beach towel) consumer,

Laura E.

One Bad Fairy

That moment when you know that she knows that you know that she knows.  Confused yet?  Let me try this another way….

Daughter Two: “So, Mom, I’ve been having some trouble with the tooth fairy.”

Me: “What kind of trouble?” (Asked in a sing-song, Mary Poppins voice – ‘cause that’s how I roll)

Daughter Two: “Well I put my tooth under my pillow last night and the tooth fairy didn’t come.  AGAIN.”

Me (feigning surprise): “Oh, you put that under your pillow already? “

I should note that at this point she is glaring at me like something from “Evil Dead” and I am realizing that there is a very good reason that second children have an actual syndrome named after their status in life.  Thank GOD I was a first born.

Daughter Two: “Yes, yes I did.  And once again she is late.  MAYBE she’ll make it tonight.”

Final piercing glare then exit, stage left.

And then I knew.  I knew that she knew that I knew that she KNEW.   We were there – that delicate crossroad in life when the fairy tale ends but no one is ready to say the words.   She knew that the fairy wasn’t delayed because of a volcanic explosion in Iceland that grounded all creatures of flight or late by a couple of days because she had a broken wing.   Uh-huh, before you ask, used them both and few more.  Like I said above – second child syndrome is real for a reason.

So bittersweet is that moment of knowing, for both of us.  Because now I know that she knows that I definitely suck as a fairy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some interest payments on an enamel coated dentin blob.