I have all these memories from my child hood that involve a whole lot of mumbling to myself. Usually, things like “What the fuck” or “What in the actual fuck?!?”
One of the most common “WTF” moments would come right at the very end of every single fucking summer break.
Remember when you would load into the family grocery-hauler with your mom and various other relatives to set out on a fun-filled day of procuring things which one would need to start a new school year? Things like new clothes, that perfect Trapper Keeper and the ever-allusive color folders with brads AND pockets? Well I don’t! Because that shit rarely happened! That’s likely the reason I used the word “procuring” because I’m willing to bet money that anyone who actually went on family shopping trips for that stuff never uses that word, ever!
My parents’ most successful and quite possibly most common prank of all time was hyping me and my brother up all goddamned summer about how much new stuff we “might” get for school. For some stupid-ass reason, my brother and I fell for this shit year after year.
Right before (like a week before) the first day of school, we would get the bombshell news that we were dirt-ass poor. Why in the world this was always new information, I still don’t know. But it just was. Why in the world my parents seemed to forget that school started the same fucking time every fucking year, again that’s beyond my comprehension.
Not like it was a surprise every year. “Oh, school is starting the first week of September? Since when?!?”
So without fail, I would get all excited about what kind of shoes I wanted, picking out that awesome new Trapper Keeper and perusing the Sears Kids’ catalogs (like we would ever have money for any of that). And without fail, we would get the same let downs. “We don’t have any money but maybe next payday, we can go get something.” Mommy always seemed to have her “special grass” at hand though. And she damn sure didn’t have a green thumb, either!
“We can probably spend about $300 for each of you this year.”
“We can probably spend about $100 dollars for each of you this year.”
“You know what? Your shoes that are two-sizes too small and have holes in the bottom can probably last another year.”
“When I was your age, it was fashionable to wear pants that stopped above our ankles.”
I did eventually get a sweet Trapper Keeper, right about the time Mead 5 Star Books were hitting the shelves. Always a dollar short and a day late.
In case you’re wondering, this was almost always the case with birthdays and Christmases too. Is there a religion that doesn’t celebrate either of those things?Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe? Because I’m pretty sure that’s the group we should’ve belonged to.
The Grass Is Dead! 
This was a hoot. I absolutely LIVED for the new Trapper Keeper every year, and I was an intrepid little shit in making sure that I got one. Once I finagled the money, I would essentially camp out in the school supplies aisle, going through every single Trapper they had, making sure I could find the most interesting and unique one possible. Of course, on the first day of school I would discover that 50 of my closest friends picked out the same exact one. Damn it.
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