THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9608310064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 104 lines
THE WALL in front of Phillip G. Smith stretched from his toes to well over his head.
Imposing.
Challenging.
Yellow.
Glue sticks. Scads of them. In little packages.
Smith looked at the list in his hand, folded to reveal sections his wife had highlighted. He looked at the Wall of Yellow Glue Sticks. He looked back at his list.
He wasn't alone. In fact, in the week before schools reopened, he was surrounded in this special back-to-school aisle of classroom supplies in the Wal-Mart off Lynnhaven Parkway in Virginia Beach.
Parents and children crept along three such aisles, lists in hand, finding an item - sometimes with an excited shout of ``Got it!'' - then crossing it off and moving on, a multi-headed beast bobbing up and down, reaching overhead and crouching low, then shuffling forward a few feet before turning the corner for the next aisle.
And always carrying The List: the schools' printed-out catalogs of suggested, requested or needed - depending on the school - supplies to be brought to school by the students.
Smith has three children at Parkway Elementary School. Each had different lists, from basic crayons and pencils for his first-grade daughter, to the scarily specific ``six single-subject notebooks and one five-subject notebook'' for his fifth-grade daughter.
``I'm going to get pretty much everything on the list,'' Smith said. ``You could send them to school with a few notebooks and pencils, and they'd come back saying they need this, this and this. It'd be pretty difficult.''
School-supply lists have become ubiquitous in the elementary grades and in some middle schools here and elsewhere. The Wal-Mart staff here called area schools for their lists, made copies and stacked them - 33 schools' worth - near the front entrance where parents can't miss them.
And parents like the lists, said Cecil E. Barfield, the store's assistant manager.
``The only complaints we've had is for the schools that did not send us the list,'' Barfield said.
His school-supply shelves - the store adds three to its normal four aisles of stationery for the back-to-school rush - were replenished overnight, but already the neatly stacked spiral notebooks, hanging packets of pens and pencils and row upon row of crayons were pocked by holes and gaps. It was just midday.
Last week was the rush-before-the-rush for school supplies. Tonight is the real deal, when stores are inundated by a wave of scissors-and-rulers procrastinators and students who have met their teachers and learned what they really need for school this year.
``We get a real big rush about 3 o'clock on Tuesday,'' said Martin C. Nicely, manager of the Office Max in Norfolk. His store also sets out a table with the schools' lists.
``It's like Christmas Eve on Tuesday. . . . Our Christmas is Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night.''
That might be too late for some. The Kmart in Chesapeake's Western Branch section has had trouble keeping its shelves filled, with purchases outracing new deliveries.
``We've sold out of notebook paper,'' said Debbie L. Merritt, a department manager. ``We've sold out of composition books. People are coming in looking for them.''
Things began picking up at the beginning of August, Merritt said. Sales people began taking rainchecks for portfolios and notebook paper. Some customers, faced with multiple school-supply lists totaling $60 and more and fearing future shortages, put notebook paper on layaway.
And store management did the civilian equivalent of canceling all leaves this past weekend - every sales associate was scheduled to work to handle the expected late school-supply crush.
``If you don't get it when it's there, you're not going to get it,'' Merritt said.
That's why Sandi W. Cristman began in July. Even before she got the list for her sixth-grade son. She finished up last week at the Virginia Beach Wal-Mart.
``You have to,'' she said. ``Because you don't know when you need those things. Like any parent, who wants to send their kid to school without all the goodies? Especially when everyone else has them?''
But the lists can be tricky. Some teachers want white glue, some want glue sticks, some don't care as long as it's sticky. Some want a year's worth of pencils, some just enough for a day. Everyone seems to want different numbers of spiral notebooks and binders and folders.
Some give brand-name preferences, particularly for scissors - Fiskers is a favorite. No one wants ``Trapper-Keepers'' - the tri-fold notebooks are too big for the desks.
Inside the Wal-Mart, Esther L. Freeman, her son and daughter are tossing stuff into a shopping cart and checking off The List - actually, several of them, since her children go to Trantwood Elementary School and to pullout programs at the Old Donation Center For the Gifted and Talented.
``So I have five lists for two children,'' Freeman said. ``That's all I get: what's on the list.''
Not that she always agrees with the teachers. ``They want glue sticks. But glue sticks dry up as soon as the kids open them.''
Once she sent a child to school with narrow-ruled notebook paper. The teacher sent it back, saying she needed wide-ruled. Freeman likes Velcro closures on notebooks because zippers break - teachers don't like them.
She battles with her children, too, over brand-name logos on school supplies, and with reusing things already at home. But that's not what getting ready for the school year is all about, her children say.
``To get new stuff,'' was the purpose for Sarah, almost 8.
``It's better to buy new ones,'' said brother Joshua, a seasoned 10-year-old fifth-grader, ``and let Sarah have the old ones.'' by CNB