School Supplies Already? It's Still Summer Though!

Yesterday morning after working 10 1/2hours, at 5:00am when most people were still in bed, I made my way over to my local school supply store before the mad rush to take advantage of the tax free weekend. Yes, that's right North Carolina is tax free the first weekend in August on school supplies, etc. I know you are saying, but you don't have kids and no I'm not a school teacher either, which is what the clerk asked me. But there are so many kids who come from families that can't afford school supplies, so I took advantage of the opportunity to help some local school children in need.
Memories flooded my mind as I loaded my shopping cart with crayons, colored pencils, pens, highlighters, tablets, rulers, glue, paper, etc. My thoughts turned to grade school when as a family, usually for FHE we would take our school lists to our local KINGS and fill our shopping carts full of new school supplies. I can still smell the aroma of that wonderful store(it kind of had this plastic smell) that had just about everything one would desire, including a downstairs full of toys, coloring books, games, marbles, and bicycles. Oh, those were the days! A side note, KINGS had this great candy isle where you could get jolly rancher sticks, lemon heads, and grape heads for 10 cents each and any other candy you could ever dream of; this was of course my favorite isle, even during school supply shopping. Each school year we would get a new pair of shoes (I remember getting a pair of purple velcro scratch and sniff grape sneakers in 5th grade), a few new outfits, and we would carefully pack all of our new school supplies in our back packs, stand in front of the tree in the front yard for our yearly picture (we did this every school year, even into college) and mom and our dog Nickie would walk us down to Sunny Ridge Elementary for our first day of school. I remember mom always had a baby on her hip or in a stroller. The special thing about this school was my grandpa and grandma Jeanne Swensen live directly across the street. We always had a place to park our bikes for safe keeping. Do you remember Jr. High when the TRAPPER KEEPER was the hot item? I sure do. Everyone had to have one, even me. And when I got into High School and College we still did the school shopping FHE, but mom had plenty of school supplies in a box in the storage room. However, why I could never find a pen at home when I needed to take a phone message is still a mystery to me.
So after spending just over $100, I left the store with a big smile on my face, a cart full of bagged school supplies, and thoughts of school memories on my mind. Now to find the kids who are in need of school supplies...