Why I Want to Marry Amazon
Dear Amazon,
I would like to marry something about you right now. Seriously, I’m ready to make a lifetime commitment.
Aside from all the goodness you’ve offered me, a faithful Amazon Prime member, who can absently one-click her way to exorbitant amounts of titles you recommend while nearly asleep under her covers after bedtime, tonight you allowed me to order all of the school supplies for the coming school year, for my first grader and second grader.
School begins in 12 days. Roughly.
The thing is, I’m something of a school and office supply whore. It’s astonishing and embarrassing how excited I can get and to what lengths I will go. No boundaries I tell you. None.
However, I am pretty sure hell is a place where one must spend all her days shopping for school supplies and groceries with small children, and the floor will be lined with matchbox cars and legos for one to step on in the night.
This is my scene in WalMart, Target, or the school supply aisle of the grocery store: take your pick.
The school supply list will ask for 2 Pink Pearl erasers; I will inevitably only find packages of 3. The list begs for 6 glue sticks; I will find only packages of 5. I am asked to buy 6 black fine-tip low-odor dry erase Expo markers; I am faced with packages of 4 black chisel tip. I need to get heavy duty poly portfolio folders, two red, two yellow, with brads; I am faced only with medium duty folders, three purple, four green, and one blue, with ‘tangs.’ (Who the in the H started calling them tangs?)
All of the above with two boys in tow, who are strategically pulling strings and releasing the helium balloons from their little cage on the ceiling.
It’s enough to put a girl in prison, like Steve Martin’s meltdown over hot dog buns in Father of the Bride. When I think of how I might fare in women’s prison, I’m pretty sure I want to follow every rule anyone has ever set. Which means I’ve stopped borrowing Xanax as needed from anyone, since I just learned that’s actually considered a felony. (Oopsie daisy.)
Amazon, my knight in virtual armor, you have washed away my torment. As I click-cliccked my way through the lists, all in my jammies and listening to Songza (Songs to Buy School Supplies To), I may have even splurged on a few duplicates of things that – I assure you – I would not have in the store.
For example, the two red and two yellow heavy duty poly portfolio binders with brads? I went ahead and bought four complete rainbow sets of six. I mean, really, did anyone overdose from extra folders lying around the house? You never know when you’ll need pockets and brads.
(Again with the whorrish tendencies.)
School supplies, you will not take me down this year. But only because I strolled the virtual aisle with my boyfriend, Amazon. It was like eating cotton candy in the evening at a summer time fair, walking under a canopy of white bistro lights and listening to a faraway caliope.
Yes, I will proceed to checkout and confirm my order.
All my love,
t.
Michelle says:
I’m a dedicated Amazon shopper too, but I just read about their warehouse practices this week and now I have mixed feelings about shopping there. https://www.motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/09/amazon-warehouse-heat-shipping. Click the link to the Morning Call article (or don’t, it’s really depressing). Then again I don’t know that Wal-Mart or Target is any better.
Jodi Brown says:
I don’t even have kids in school yet and I still roam those school supply aisles like a kid in a candy store…a little too overloaded by the choices to be confident enough to choose. But I’m compelled to wander there because I know it’s the cheapest that stuff will be all year and I can’t resist new crayons. Or post its. Or, wait! The gel pens are particularly interesting, too. Bill was so baffled to discover he married someone with an ENTIRE dresser devoted to nothing but school/office supplies…..stashed like a hoarder, organized with some serious ocd, he couldn’t make sense of it at all. Now if I had to get all SPECIFIC about these supplies with a school supply list…I’d amazon my way to bliss right there, too.
Brad Luczywo says:
Yes, you’ll never know when you need brads. Everyone needs more brads. Just sayin’.
Tricia Lott Williford says:
Well played, Luczywo. Well played. 🙂
Jeanette Rorabaugh says:
I am so relieved! I thought I was the only one. But you came out today and admitted your illicit relationship with office supplies. I feel like I’ve found a sister in my sickness. I can quit any time I want to, though. Really. Any time. Today? Maybe tomorrow.
Paper products are my downfall. Hidden in the bottom drawer of my desk are stacks of legal tablets, bundles of steno pads, and packages of construction paper. I know nothing (nothing!) about the boxes of note cards, note pads, and yellow sticky notes on the top shelf of the linen closet. Note cards are not just for recipes, you know. But what keeps me awake at night are fantasies of binder clips. Huge ones, strong enough to hold up a drape when a screw pulls out; all the way to tiny ones, perfect earrings to accessorize that business suit, a godsend for a torn hem. Boxes and boxes of each size. They’re engineering marvels, you know. Who thinks of these things? Why so many? I was a Girl Scout and I’m prepared.
I’m so sorry! I got carried away. I know you understand.
By the way, tangs are mixed with water to make a disgusting orange breakfast drink.
Tricia Lott Williford says:
Oh my goodness, Jeanette. So funny!