THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409070676
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 294 lines
THE MASTERCARD is over its limit, and you're into deficit spending in your checking account.
Your ears are still ringing from the screams of your 6-year-old during the vaccination session at the pediatrician's, and your 12-year-old won't talk to you because you told her she's still too young to wear eye shadow.
You've cleared off the refrigerator in preparation for this year's art work (and boy, does it look bare), bought a new calendar on which to track PTA meetings and open houses; a new file folder for the report cards and A papers (you hope); and a dumping table by your front door for book bags, lunch boxes, papers and pencils.
You've taken the kindergartner to the orientation at the elementary school (and sat with the other parents crying inside at the thought that your ``baby'' is now old enough for real school), cringed at the fortress look of the high school your oldest begins attending; and panicked at the thought of the impending nine months of homework fights, lost reports, last-minute projects, parent-teacher meetings and school holidays (for which you'll have to scrounge for day care).
Yup, summer's over. transition. something like:
What follows is a look at the scenes across Hampton Roads as parents and children rushed to gather back-to-school necessities, from clothing to shots to registrations.
Lynnhaven Mall
The pace is fast. Six stores in 40 minutes. That averages out to a little more than six minutes a store for Kirsten Ponton and Dareth Trice.
The Gap. County Seat. The Limited. Express. Lerner. Montgomery Ward. The two high schoolers weave from one store to the next as though they could make the circuit blind-folded.
Kirsten, 14, comes sliding out of the Lerner dressing room in stocking feet, modeling an olive green shirt.
``Where is she?'' she says, looking for her friend.
She looks at the shirt in the mirror. Turns sideways. She's not sure. Does it look good or not? She needs a second opinion. Kirsten goes on a search and finds Dareth looking for her.
Fifteen-year-old Dareth is unbuckling a small black purse with a strap that crosses her white T-shirt.
``Hey,'' Kirsten says, flinging her arms out like a fashion model. ``Do you like it?''
``Yes, I like it,'' Dareth answers.
Dareth holds up a shirt. A knit shirt. An olive green knit shirt. The same shirt that Kirsten is modeling. ``I'm getting it,'' Dareth says with a slight turn of her head that says ``Sorry.''
Kirsten puts her hands on her head.
Argh.
``You?'' Dareth says.
``Nah. The sleeves are too long.''
Dareth pays for the shirt - $17.75 - with 18 one-dollar bills.
A short stint with these First Colonial High School friends makes one thing clear: If you're a teenage female shopping for back-to-school clothes, you gotta take someone with you. ``You need their opinion,'' Kirsten says. ``You could be in an awful mood and think it looks stupid, but in reality it looks good.''
But that someone shouldn't necessarily be your mother. ``I take, like two years to decide anything,'' Dareth says.
``And her mom is like, `Get it done now,' '' Kirsten says.
Yet, oddly they think about their moms when they're shopping.
No apologies though. ``I was brought up like that,'' Kirsten says. ``If I see something I like, I think `What would my mom think?' ''
The two girls have been at Virginia Beach's Lynnhaven Mall since 10 a.m. and will leave at 5:30 p.m. when Kirsten's mother picks them up. It's now 2 p.m. and Kirsten has spent most of the $92 she came with.
``I still have a dollar left,'' she says.
They estimate they'll spend $250 on back-to-school clothes this season.
``It's not cheap,'' Kirsten says soberly.
But you gotta have clothes, right?
Next stop, Montgomery Ward.
Marshalls department store
From the overheard department in Chesapeake:
Impatient mother is pacing back and forth waiting for her son to emerge from the dressing room.
``Are you ready yet?
``Just a minute,'' comes the call.
Five minutes pass.
``Come on out. Let me see how you look.''
``Just a minute,'' the boy answers.
Five more minutes pass.
``Oh, for heaven's sake, it's just a shirt and pants, how long does it take to put it on?''
``The shirt is taking a while. Just a minute.''
The mother rolls her eyes at the clerk and makes as if to march into the dressing room herself, but restrains herself.
She waits, tapping her foot, arms crossed, until her son emerges with a white, button-down shirt untucked, cuffs covering his hands and khaki pants pulled on over his shorts.
``Finally,'' breathes the mother in exasperation. ``Come over here,'' she says, dragging him over to a shopping cart full of clothes. She's not going to let him loose in that dressing room again.
``Take off that shirt. Let's try this one on, instead.''
The boy, just at that age when kids become modest about their bodies, refuses, his cheeks pink.
``I can't take my shirt off,'' he hisses at his mother. ``Everyone will see.''
``Oh for heaven's sake,'' she cries, and sends him back into the dressing room with another shirt.
Five minutes go by.
``How's it going?''
``Just a minute,'' calls the boy.
Wal-Mart
Trey Spruill wants The Shadow lunch box. And only The Shadow lunch box.
``Why not?'' the 6-year-old whines to his mother. ``Why can't I have it?''
``Because you won't use it long enough,'' Debbie Spruill says.
And she should know. Back home are six lunch boxes - remnants of Trey's previous two years of preschool and of his 7-year-old sister's early education.
``Every year, a new lunch box,'' she says, wearily picking through the selection.
But after 20 minutes of opening up each model, searching for the essentials - a Thermos and a strap to hold in the sandwich and potato chips - she was stymied.
``They just don't have the selection,'' she moans, as Trey's eyes light up for the blue lunch box with the Flintstones' logo. Then his sister Stephanie runs over with a 1990s version of the paper bag lunch sack - in chartreuse plastic.
``How about this,'' she urges.
Trey gives it a contemptuous look. ``No way,'' he says. ``That's not even a lunch box.''
``Come on,'' his mother says finally. ``We need to look some more somewhere else.''
But on the way out of the Norfolk store, she finds the perfect lunch box in a heap on a table in the middle of the aisle. It's square. It's got a Thermos. It's got straps inside. It's plain blue and pink - no cartoon characters. And, best of all, it's only $3.
Two aisles over, clerk Lynelle Hunt is restocking the supply of Crayola markers. She's tired, and she's been too busy with back-to-school shoppers. This is her second such season at Wal-Mart, and it seems degrees worse than last year: kids screaming, grownups yelling; a 7-year-old so completely controlling his parents that he leads them around the aisles like a trained dog, pointing out the supplies he just HAS to have.
``I just don't remember it being this terrible,'' she says with a sigh, picking up the lost Thermos that somehow found its way over to the aisle with the pens and pencils.
``I think parents should come shopping for back-to-school stuff by themselves,'' Hunt says.
Then she thinks of a bright spot to all this. At least it's not Christmas.
Health department
Ebonie Scott was the first in line, grinning shyly and twining her arms together.
That was before the kindergartner got the shot.
``Ow,'' she said indignantly, frowning up at nurse Nancy K. Riddick.
Riddick was unmoved. ``Tell me when to take it out,'' she told Ebonie, deftly injecting the vaccine while the little girl glared suspiciously at her arm.
``Take it out,'' Ebonie demanded. ``Ow.''
Next.
They came into the Portsmouth Health Department smiling and left, in many cases, tearful, wearing stickers and teddy bear Band-Aids. But all the nurses were smiling, particularly Phyllis Bricker. Head of the Portsmouth school nurses, Bricker was interested in seeing that all school-age children were fully immunized before school opened so that none would be turned away on the first day. That, she acknowledged wryly, was not likely to happen.
The health department held a special evening clinic to offer free immunizations and school physicals. Physicals booked up completely, but only a trickle of children arrived for shots during the first hour. The volunteer staff, which included community doctors, health department and school nurses, and clerks, had been prepared to immunize 75 children - and expected more.
``How old are you?'' Riddick asked Derrick Edwards.
``Four,'' he said, holding up fingers to prove it.
``That's old, isn't it?'' Riddick asked, preparing the first shot. Derrick grinned. Then the needle went into his arm.
A tiny wail came from behind tightly clenched lips, and he crammed his fingers into his eyes. The second needle went in. Derrick reached for Dad's shoulder. ``I want to go,'' he wailed.
``Do you know what Daddy did for you?'' Bricker asked the boy, whose back was hunched. ``He kept you from being sick for a long, long time.'' Then she directed a piercing look at Dad.
``Daddy, when did you have your last tetanus shot?'' Bricker demanded.
Dad rolled his eyes.
``Has it been more than 10 years?'' Bricker pressed.
``Uhh, I don't know,'' Dad said, and headed for the physical exam line.
A second evening clinic will be held tonight, but the nurses didn't really expect a big turnout until Wednesday, when some kids will be turned away from school because they don't have all their required shots.
Despite giving measles shots in the schools last spring, running a mobile immunization van into the community, sending letters to parents and offering evening clinics, some children will arrive at school without proof that they are fully immunized, nurses said.
``What will happen is they'll turn up at school, be turned away and they'll show up here,'' predicted health department nurse Cathy Bradshaw.
Tidewater Thrift Store
Amy leans against the iron rail in the back of Norfolk's Tidewater Thrift Store, getting her fill. Before her, a floor model television set on sale for $199 flashes a song-and-dance number from the Broadway show, ``Gilly's Last Jam.'' Andy Griffith glows sickeningly green on the table-top model beside it.
On a 19-inch Quasar TV set above the Mayberry scene, a perky female newscaster reads the world's top headlines.
``Our TV is broken,'' the 6-year-old says, looking away briefly. She's just about to take a seat on a canary-yellow velour wingback when her mom yells, ``Don't sit down, Amy. Come over here and tell me what you like.''
Amy trots over to the rack of used pants and sweaters. A pair of flowered and denim jeans, $1.98 each, look only slightly faded. She points out a couple of sweaters, a pastel pink and a multicolored short-sleeve. Three pair of khaki pants lie across her mother's arm.
``How many can I get?'' she asks. Her mom winces. She knows she can't afford to spend $20 on clothes, but the pleading expression on her daughter's face is too much.
``If you like them all, we can get them all.''
``Cool,'' Amy says, running back to the electronic section.
Her mom folds the clothes neatly.
``All parents want to send their kids back to school looking nice. I think these look nice, don't you? I wish I could give her more. But these will do, don't you think?''
Glenwood Elementary
Carol Gil leans toward her daughter, Nicole, and repeats the name of a teacher. Nicole flips through a yearbook on a table in the school office and spreads the pages for younger sister Monique.
``That's my teacher?'' first-grader-to-be Monique asks, all eyes and grin. ``Ahhh, great!''
They repeat the process for brother Miguel, who's transferring into the fourth grade. ``A man teacher!'' Carol says excitedly. Miguel's Atlanta Braves cap bobs in recognition.
This is an unusually quiet afternoon at the state's largest elementary school - more than 1,800 Virginia Beach students - where about 400 new ones have registered since the last school year. The morning was a ``circus,'' attendance secretary Martha Frames says - more than a dozen families registered their children, giving the office copier an Olympic workout with birth certificates, health records and previous school grades.
The fast-approaching school year heightens the tension for parents who can't believe they're already signing up their 5-year-olds for kindergarten. It's even worse for those like the Gils, who've just moved to the area from Coral Springs, Fla.
Only weeks removed from San Diego, Carol Shelton and daughter Christina, 6 1/2, cut through the school's gym, searching for Christina's new second-grade classroom. ``Mom, I told you - they have ropes!'' Christina says, pointing to climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling of the dark gym.
Shelton is amazed at the size of the school - 12 second-grade classes compared to four in Christina's former school.
``We came in to register, and we came in to let her look around some more, get the feel,'' Shelton says. ``This is a big change for her because they have indoor lunchrooms. In California, they eat outside all year round.''
Outside the office, Nicole Gil breathlessly reports to her mother. ``Mom, we went to her room and met her teacher! It's so cool. It's so colorful.''
Gil wants to leave - she has lots to do. But Monique insists. She wants her mother to meet her teacher.
``All right,'' Gil says, giving in. ``Let's go meet the teacher.''
Salem Middle School
In the sea of baggy-style pants and new-for-school boots and befuddled squints at room numbers and squeals of friends reuniting and general last-week-of-summer-vacation hubbub swirling around the new student orientation, a father reassures his daughter.
``Everybody else is in the same boat as you.''
Sure looks that way. Most of the kids clutch yellow school maps and white guides titled ``Hot Tips For New Students'' (sample question: ``What if my locker is jammed?''). With their parents, they trace the steps they'll follow on the first day of school.
Robert Smith, 13, is transferring into the eighth grade from another school and looking forward to it, even though he knows only one other student. ``Excited,'' he says. ``I'm not nervous at all.''
His mother, Cynthia Smith, peers into another classroom in the Virginia Beach school. Empty again. ``I haven't met a teacher yet,'' she says.
Bobby Huntley took off work to escort his daughter, Star, 11, through the orientation. He's the one who picked out classes for her earlier because she was moving here from Washington state. ``I didn't do too bad,'' he says.
Star agrees. Mostly. She's happy with her computer class, but not with the required math class. Mainly she's apprehensive about the whole change of coasts and lives.
``She's reluctant,'' her father says, wrapping his arm around her. ``Not only a new school, but new friends.''
``Confused,'' Star sums it up.
Tiffany Langhals, 11, is happier with her move out of the more-restrictive elementary school and up to the relative freedom of sixth grade. Except that she won't be with her best friend except for lunch. And, as her older sister warned, she has to run track in physical education.
But there's a silver lining even in that. ``I got a new gym outfit,'' she says happily. MEMO: Staff writers Matthew Bowers, Elizabeth Simpson, Diane Tennant and
Denise Watson contributed to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: Color staff illustrations by Janet Shaughnessy
by CNB