The Black Republican

I was in the check-out line at Publix Supermarket, standing right behind a cute little girl who might have been 11 or 12. She was carrying an old-fashioned, brown imitation leather, barrel-shaped purse that looked somewhat coordinated to go with her blonde hair and orange shirt. It looked as though she was making just one purchase: a paper bag, which from outward markings apparently contained school supplies.

Publix has a series of charity drives each year, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where they fill paper bags with dry and canned goods, to be given to the poor if you carry them to the checkout counter and pay for them. Though I recognized the familiar theme of the charity drive, the school supplies appeared to me to be a new idea of giving a helpful hand to parents, by collecting all the basic school supplies, and putting them into a paper bag so you don't have to hunt them all down yourself. 'Great idea,' I thought. 'I'll have to pick up one for each of my kids. Maybe that'll get them off my back when they come to me with that insane list handed out by the school board.'

For those of you in other states that may not experience the same insanity, the schools in Florida have decided that since good Republicans won't let them raise taxes anymore, they'll just not buy any pencils, pens, or paper (or anything else) for the classroom, then spend the money elsewhere in the school budget and appeal to the parents to send a crapload of junk to school with the kids on the first day. The stores in the area go along with the scheme by offering supply lists at the door, which are drawn up by each school declaring what each child must have on the first day. In some cases, the lists are broken down further by grade, and maybe even personalized by each teacher.

Over the years, this "appeal" has gotten more and more outlandish, not to mention more and more expected. The kids fall into the trap by insisting that if they don't bring in their [gag!] "fair share"... well, you can use your imagination what the "BUSH IS HITLER!" crowd would do if your kid ever dared to violate the dictates of The State and its Minions... I mean, "the teachers' crime syndicate"... I'm sorry, I mean, "the school employees". Each year, I get more and more frustrated by this scam, but though I try to fight back by spending less, and I grumble and dispute its legitimacy each year, I swallow my pride and don't embarrass my kids by sending them to school with nothing.

Anyway, I'm standing behind this little girl in Publix, and after her order is rung up, she pulls out an equally old-fashioned leather wallet from her old-fashioned purse, and carefully counts out the $10.99. 'Sweet,' I think to myself. 'At least she's taking responsibility for her own load of crap and not expecting her parents to pay for it.' (My kids are so irresponsible with money, I've rescinded their allowances about a thousand times. In the end, I prefer to dole out the money with an eyedropper, and pay for stuff myself. You're right, I'm not doing the kids any favors this way, and I'm not teaching them proper capitalism. Sue me.)

So the little girl gets her receipt, turns around - and her bag of supplies is gone. "Where are my school supplies?" the girl asks the bagger. The bagger points to a huge basket nearby that's filled to the brim with these paper bags. It's not an assistance program for the parents after all, it's charity for the state-run school.

The next half-hour of my life is pretty much a blur. I watched helplessly as the girl, totally dumbfounded, is told by the bagger that her purchase was a donation to the school board, and (though I didn't hear clearly, I think the bagger said) that she can't have it back. The girl's father, who had been waiting patiently nearby with his groceries, walks over to investigate, has a few words with the bagger, puts his arm around the daughter and escorts her out of the store. The whole scene seemed to take on the most absurd aura of Svengali-like deception. 'You can't fight the state, honey,' I imagined the father saying, as I saw him lean down and whisper to her. Maybe he told her he'd give her the money back, or maybe he just told her it was her own fault for not reading the bag closely enough. (The latter being something I was obviously guilty of myself.) In any event, they walked right out and the store employees didn't take so much as a minute to question the propriety of taking the girl's money. The idea that she should get her supplies - or at least the damn money back - seemed never to cross anyone's mind.

I was so tempted to make a scene there and fight for the girl's money, but with her own parents not doing so, I didn't see that it was my place to butt in. I was afraid and embarrassed that I was an unwilling accomplice to this mess. I had just witnessed the State of Florida literally stealing candy money from a baby to feed into their teacher-run socialist racketeering boondoggle, and everyone just takes it for granted that "that's the way it is". The drones of 1984 were walking all around me muttering in Newspeak, and I, playing the part of Winston Smith, can only hold my head in shame and pray that I can escape the parking lot without anyone noticing that I've seen The Truth.

By the time I got home and calmed down, I saw that if I could not do anything about the situation then, I owe it to that little girl - and my own kids - to do something now.

The school board is right. We Republicans aren't going to take it anymore having our taxes raised. But that isn't an absolutism. We're just sick to death of having our money taken from us without any sign of responsibility on the part of the government. If you're not going to hold teachers accountable, if you're not going to give me the ability to make decisions for my child's best welfare, if you're not going to show improvement from where we are, in 48th place among school systems in the U.S., we're not going to give you any more money. And now, engineering these kinds of back-door schemes to tax us without taxes by making us buy the school's supplies while the teachers continue to fail at the most basic criteria for educational advancement - I simply will not put up with it any more.

I told my son today, and will tell my daughter tomorrow: I will buy one sheaf of loose-leaf paper for each of them, just as my father did for me when I was a kid. They use whatever notebook, bookbag, pencils, papers, scissors, glue, etc. they can find laying around the house. And not another dime will go to paying for school supplies from me. After all, that little girl has already paid $11 more than they deserve.