I Love Stationery Supplies

     I always have. My father too. Maybe I got it from him. My father had these Week-At-A-Glance Calendars, notebooks essentially, a week split into 7 columns across two pages, respectively.  My dad would write a synopsis of his days in those columns. He wrote them in different colors using Flair Markers.  My dad was detailed. Maybe because he was a Virgo. Maybe not. He was born on August 31st. 
     My mom has a box filled with these notebooks. Maybe two boxes. And if I were to dig through them, I could, at random, pull any one of them out and see what he did on any given day.  For instance, the year could be 1976 and if I were to turn to August, the 11th specifically, I would be able to read about what he was doing while I was at camp. It was the year we moved to So Cal.
     I was 12. Heading into 7th grade far away from my friends. Heading into 7th grade in a strange school in a strange city with little grass and much cement. The school, a long rectangular brick building, also with little grass and much cement in a grid of a city (at lease south of the tracks) with houses that also had little grass and much cement. Think bigger driveways than front lawns. A claustrophobic city.
     Gone were the unlocked doors and packs of kids and neighbors who knew you and acres of land and space. We didn't have alleys in New City, NY. We had a creek that ran through my backyard into a pond that way back when I skated on as a kid. Later on, as I got older, I'd meet my friend Carolyn Steinberg there, and we'd smoke. And our house, a 1920's Spanish style at 317 South Peck Drive, was beautiful, but it was so close to our neighbor's house I swear I thought I could reach my arm out and touch it. Or, at least, if he reached his arm out and I reached my arm out, our fingers would touch. 
     I had moved to a city that, after those first years, I realized didn't like me very much, and I felt might just spit me out. 
     That was a long time ago. 
     I don't know if Beverly Hills spit me out or I expelled her from my bloodstream. But I will tell you this, it's always around now, as we're coming into the fall, and I was headed back to Beverly Hills High School, one of the things I was excited about was buying my school supplies. Although my mom took me shopping for new clothes too, I didn't enjoy that. It was too stressful. Trying to stay within the confines of the mysterious BHHS' style requirements. They were mostly unspoken, although once, my friend Vicky told me I wore too many colors.
     "No more than three," she said. (Or maybe it was four? I can't remember now.) And I had to get rid of my clogs. "No one wears those." And so I did. I listened. I tried. But truth be told, I did much better with stationery supplies.
     These days, I'm dangerous in a Target.  I imagine If my dad were alive, we might make trips there together on a Sunday morning. We'd stop in the stationary aisles, even if we didn't need anything. Then we might split up. You know, divide and conquer. Gel pens, journals, spiral notebooks, calendars, composition books, rainbow Flair markers, and, in December, the Week-at-a-Glance, for the following year. He would have loved the fine-tip Sharpie markers they have now, especially the ones in the colors of the rainbow. I don't know that they had those back when he was alive.
     And here we are again, Autumn is rising, summer fading into the rearview and that back-to-school buzz is in the air. And I am sure, even though I don't need anything, nothing at all, I will, no doubt, make a Target run and slow my bones in the stationary aisles. I'll buy something I don't need, and it will make my day.