First Grade School Supply List:

- 1 package red checking pencils
- 2 pkgs manila paper
- 2 marble cover composition books, Norcom, wide-ruled, 100 sheets/200 pages
- 3 writing tablets (dashed mid-line)
- 1 one-inch 3-ring binder with cover sleeve

Questions for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District:

- Is this a school supply list or a scavenger hunt?
- Why does Wal-Mart have your supply list but virtually none of your supplies?
- Can I get a permission slip from you for my boss saying that I need to be excused from work so I can get all this bought by Aug. 23?

Here’s what’s not on my list this year: Girl’s backpack and lunch kit. Nana took her and her 5-year-old cousin shopping for these items. Nana suggested Tinkerbell or Hello Kitty.

Girl picked a matching set covered with fire-breathing dragons, which she described to me on the phone.

“They’re 3D!” she said. “They were the only ones that were 3D!”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You know,” she said louder, as if I were a foreign tourist, “THREE DEE!!”

Her little girl cousin picked a Spider Man backpack and space alien lunch kit.

“I’m shocked. I don’t know what happened to these little girls,” Nana said.

“Brothers,” I said.