Back to School Shopping

I have a tale of woe from my own personal experience regarding back to school shopping I’d like to warn others about so nobody else epic fails as a Mom like I did. What some adults do not realize is that young kids need a whole new wardrobe every fall before school, because last year’s jeans never fit. Adults can have the same pair of jeans for years. They never have to try them on because there’s no chance they grew taller over the summer. Maybe they grew out and need to try them on, but never up. So I took the boys shopping when they were younger and bought all new jeans for their back to school readiness, and all was well until one month into the school year. Mike came out of his bedroom and literally grew three inches in the night. One night. No warning. As Russ walked out the door to go to work, he said, “You can’t send him to school in those highwaters,” then went on his merry way to his car. So Mike and I went to his dresser, and none of his brand new jeans fit…not even close. It dawned on me that I had a tote in the attic of jeans the next size up from my sister, so we ran to get them down. Well, the pull string to pull down the stairs to the attic is above the stairs to the basement. Not above the landing at the top of the stairs where it’s safe, but you have to lean over the top of the whole flight of stairs to reach for the pull string and pray you don’t fall. Russ is the only one tall enough to stand on his tippy toes to reach it while I hold his belt loop in the back as a safety measure I’m sure OSHA would not approve of, but he’s already half way to Scranton by now. So now I’m on a chair at the top of the stairs reaching up towards the ceiling, defying the law of gravity and shaking my head at the whole situation. Meanwhile, I have Thomas at the end of the driveway on operation stall the bus driver, and little pre-school Lauren posted at the front door as a spotter. After stretching to capacity and pulling the stairs down that lead up over the top of the other set, I realize if I didn’t unfold the sketchy folded attic steps properly, I’d be free falling straight down two floors from the attic to the basement. Great. All of us in the back of our minds figure getting the kids ready for school would kill us some day, but this was actually the closest I was to having it actually happen. In my slippers, I headed up to the dark attic with no lights and no time to find a flashlight, and crawled in my pajamas across the hard floor to the bin that’s lodged where the roof is pitched so I can’t stand up and look. As soon as I start feeling my way through this bin for jeans, I hear my spotter Lauren yell, “BUS!!” Mike, who’s patiently waiting at the bottom of the stairs for clothes while not caring whether he makes the bus or not, casually says, “Bus is here Mom.” I mumbled, “Of course it is.” So I turned to the hole in the floor where the stairs were and chucked a pair of jeans down to Mike and started to crawl towards the opening to see if they fit him. It’s a perfect fit. I said, “Looks great, have a nice day! RUN!” By the time I got back down the creaky stairs, Lauren was standing on the front porch in her cartoon pj’s yelling to the bus driver, “Wait! He’s coming!” Thomas was sitting on the bus pretending he’s an only child, blissfully unaware of the whole clothing catastrophe that just unfolded, and Mike had already run the full length of the driveway with his new 3-inch taller legs and was bounding onto the bus. It was a train wreck. So the moral of the story is, don’t just shop for jeans that fit your kids now. Please, for the love of all that is holy, have a spare pair the next size up readily accessible at a moment’s notice, because sometimes a moment’s notice is all you have!!