La rentrée scolaire

It’s “back to school” time, or la rentre scolaire, as it is called here. Stores have been selling school supplies for quite a while now and each time Paul and I went to the store, I felt like a naughty child sneaking away to gaze the aisles of pens, pencils, crayons, notebooks, paper, and all of the wonderful things that occupy shelf space in the stores at this time of the year. So now that all the moms aren’t crowding the aisles and the children are all in school, I looked forward to having the opportunity to check out French school supplies.

I went to the largest store I have found here, Auchan. It’s even bigger than the biggest Walmart. I had to take a train/tram to get there but it was well worth the effort. I soon found myself in the school supply department….. first there were erasers…. hundreds of them… and these weren’t the little playful erasers in the shapes of fruit and flowers and dinosaurs.. these were serious erasers. My first thought…. those French kids must make a whole lot of mistakes! But I was struck by how well designed the erasers were. What style! Then it was on to the pencil section. No standard No. 2 yellow pencils down these aisles. They were the kind you find in the art stores… a number and a letter– like 9B, 8B, 7B, 6B, 5B, 4B, 3B, 2B, B, HB, F, etc. and I quickly realized why there were so many erasers… these pencils have no handy-dandy eraser at the top.

Too bad I couldn’t take notes… I found those error correction tools and laughed to myself at the catchy name for them… but now I can’t remember what they were called. So then it was on to the pen aisle. Thousands of pens… all fountain pens – or rather, cartridge pens - every color and style and all really cool. They even had disposable cartridge pens for 1.50 euros (came with a spare cartridge). Even those had a really catchy name that I have since forgotten.

I began to wonder where the ball-point pens were when I spotted the familiar labels… BIC, Papermate, Pilot, etc. What a disappointment. If I wanted a ball-point pen, it would have to be made in America. Then I checked out the notebooks and papers. No having to choose between “college ruled” or notebook paper. No lines – instead, it was all graph paper. I knew that, but I thought I might see something labeled, “papier americain”.

I didn’t buy any school supplies. I didn’t need any. Not this year, anyway.