Back To School

Well, it’s back to school time here in America’s heartland.  My wife handles all the back to school shopping but this is the first year I’ve looked at the receipts.  When did this get so expensive?  When I went back to school I would get a new pair of shoes (the cheap ones) 2 pairs of Tough-Skin jeans from Sears and maybe 2 new shirts.  For school I needed pens, pencils, crayons, pencil crayons and erasers.  My backpack, pencil case and so on would just carry on from the year before.  I have 2 teen aged daughters.  1 is in 8^th grade and the other is starting college.  Just for school supplies we spent over $200 and didn’t even get everything on the list!  That was for 1 child.  Talk about Christmas is July. (We started buying in July)  And these were all on sale.  Next we moved on to clothes.  Fortunately they wear uniforms at her school so there isn’t as much to buy.  That doesn’t mean I dodged that bullet.  First she needed shoes.  After shopping around my wife finally found an acceptable pair of shoes.  (No, they weren’t cheap!)  Then there was the gym outfit.  Shouldn’t that we like shorts and a tee shirt and cost about $15 total.  Apparently that’s not how it works anymore.  You need the Under Armor outfit of just the right size for a maturing girl.  That cost more than the shoes…for a gym outfit.  Then came the stop at Victoria’s Secret.  You know what her secret is?  She’s going to take all your money and make you want to come back once you have more.  That store is evil I tell you, evil.  The oldest daughter had to get in on that trip.  To get you in there they offer all these exciting gifts with purchase.  If you don’t make it there the first day of the sale, though, no gift for you except a receipt.  Casinos should take notes from them.  Now I don’t know what happens in that store.  Maybe the air circulation system sprays endorphins in the air or they have hypnotic music.  All I know is perfectly rational women enter there and lose all self-control of their buying impulses.  It’s back to school.  Who cares about how “cute” your bras and panties are?  Apparently someone does because they spent the most money there and said, “We didn’t even really get anything.”  I’m telling you, that store has some sort of mind control that makes women want to spend and men want to wait outside.  So what’s the point of all this?  Back to school has become a huge industry to which parents are simply slaves.  When did it get so out of control?