HW 32: School Supplies

When you are little, in elementary school shopping for school supplies is usually a big deal. I remember being excited to start off the school year and being able to buy a bunch of new notebooks, pens, pencils, binders, and a backpack. For Riverbend and her cousin it is like the highlight of the year. Riverbend gets really excited to go out and shop for school supplies for her cousin’s young daughters. They go to a shop, because Baghdad does not have big shopping malls, they just have tiny or big shops, for all the new school supplies. Riverbend picks out notebooks, pencils, and erasers for her cousin’s daughters. She chooses amongst Barbie, Winnie the Pooh, and Lion King notebooks, which is quite similar to here. When you are little you can get notebooks with Barbie, Disney movies, Strawberry Shortcake, and any movie that is a hit at the time. The little girls cannot go shopping for their own necessities because their mother will not let them out of the house, except now for school. Riverbend insists on not buying generic supplies, like a plain pink eraser. She instead buys an eraser that looks like a strawberry because “kids don’t take care of their school supplies if they’re ugly” (Riverbend, 95). I thought that was funny, but I believe she is right. In the end, the younger daughter doesn’t like the Winnie the Pooh choice because she has outgrown him, and she wanted a Barbie notebook like her big sister. It’s sad that these girls could not choose their own school supplies because of the war in Baghdad and their mother was too afraid to allow them to come. It’s also sad that Riverbend, being an older girl, got so excited to be able to leave home to go shopping for something like school supplies for her cousin’s daughters.