It's back to school time. Not for me. I'm done and this is the first time I'm not restarting school. This is hugely exciting, but not the point to this post. (And yes, my posts do have points.)

The kids went back to school in my neighborhood Thursday of last week. I drive to work about the same time they head to school. (Actually, I need to leave a few minutes earlier to deal with more cars and lower speed limits on some stretches of roads.) I drive by two elementary schools on my way to work. It was so fun to see the children going in on their first day of school. The kindergarteners were gripping their mothers' hands so hard. And the older ones were running to see friends. They all had backpacks that were shiny new and just bulging, presumably filled to the gils with new school supplies. In addition, they all carried, or balanced off their bike handlebars, plastic bags with the requisite two boxes of kleenex. Somehow that made me last the hardest as I can well remember my two box of kleenex days.

That got my roommate and I going on another topic: school supply drives. A library in my system collects school supplies from any number of sources (church, organizations, and some large companies all hold drives and help her out). Every year they hold a big party where each kid gets a backpack full of supplies for their grade, a hotdog, and a free book (courtesy of the friends of the library). There is entertainment and such. It is a good time and a very good thing to do. They supply 1600 children who register through their school or a non-profit agency (to be eligible). I had to color some stuff for my bulletin board (I know my job rocks) and my boss handed me a brand new box of crayons. All the edges were still point, nothing had been peeled. I'm 24 and I was pretty excited. Every kid deserves that kind of excitement at the beginning of the school year. Not to mention, you can have good intentions, a good work ethic, but it is pretty hard to use academics to change your economic situation if you don't have the supplies with which to do your homework. My library has a budget item to buy school supplies (very basic, notebook paper, etc.) to keep behind the desk for kids that come to the library to do their homework. (We also provide free tutors.)

And on school supply drives. The aforementioned library hand-out received crayons from a church. Lots of churches donate. The librarian happened to open one of the hundreds of boxes of crayons and noticed they had stuck Bible verses in every one. She couldn't use them because she didn't have time to remove the Bible verses. (They'll be saved and used next year when the verses are removed.) I understand, as a fellow Christian, that they thought this was a way to get their message out. Fine. And if they had been handing out supplies through thier agency, it would have been fine, the recipients would have expected it. However the library can not be seen as distributing religous propoganda. And wouldn't it ruin your joy a little bit as a seven year old to open your new box of crayons to find a Bible verse. (And many of the kids with the crayons would not have understood the verses or their portence, but I know their parents would have.) What a thing.