The Absurdity of Preparing for School

So, we had a new experience recently. And, when I saw new, for me it was all brand new. For ButterBean's school this year, we had to go and buy school uniforms. I am a proud product of public schools in the US and never had a uniform. So, this is uncharted ground for me. It was so cute watching ButterBean try on little jumpers and shirts and such. Soooo cute. But, also a bit silly. Here we are trying on the shorts and ButterBean has a similar problem to El 3atal. In Jordan, when buying shirts, it's sort of a one size fits all approach. For men, you pick the right size around the chest and the neck gapes if you aren't shaped like a straight board. So, when El 3atal tried on shirts, it looked like he borrowed his Dad's shirts.

I had flashbacks to this when trying clothes on ButterBean. She's generally petite and quite thin. However, the shirt that fit at the shoulder, bust, and length had sleeves that were 2 inches too short. The next size up had shoulder seams around mid bicep. Basically, it looked like she was wearing hand-me-downs from her older sister. How junky is that? So, I'm annoyed at the people who do sizes here in Jordan. At least for the start of school, she'll be in short sleeves which we bought in the smaller size. But really, what are they thinking? If you're thin, you're also tiny (and I mean really tiny as ButterBean is somewhere around the 10th or 15th percentile for her age). So, at any rate, I hate that she'll swim in most of her clothes, but am getting used to that.

The other thing that has struck me as a bit on the absurd side is the instructions they gave us with her books. I think you need a Master's in Physics to figure them out. Write this, this, this and that on the cover, then cover the book with this and place it in the that. The kids need five (exactly five apparently, don't ask me why) pencils labeled with their names (what?!). So I ordered them from a company in the US imprinted with ButterBean's name. And, went ahead and did the twins in advance so I won't have to be worrying about this again in 2 years. And they need colored pencils, and erasers, and, and, and... I don't remember it being this complicated when I was a kid (of course we just used brown paper bags that were self-decorated as book covers, so... maybe it wasn't.

All the instructions leave me going, Hunh? And then (and here is the true crux of the problem) why? See, this gets me into trouble each and every time. I want to understand the why before I'll put myself to significant effort. Like the new for this year requirement for a hearing test. Why? We've done them, but getting the records of them is a PITA. In fact, in the US, it's done at birth for all babies. And then, we had them done again for all of the kids (part of the speech therapy evaluation process). So, I'm not really inclined to go to any trouble at all to get them done. We'll just try and get their records from the US. Who knew what a hassle that was going to be :).

Finally, par for the course from last year, the KG still hasn't decided what the first day of school will be, but has indicated that it will be September 1 or later. Yikes, then I guess we should expect an end date of June 15 or later. There goes that summer vacation... At least we know when ButterBean starts and can enjoy preparing for that and starting her without worrying about the TwinBeans. They won't start until later, so she'll get lots of focus. I'll look at that particular silver lining and ignore others where the silver seems to be tarnished :). At any rate...

Happy school supplies!