When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I found an abandoned project today. Thirty-five pages of an epistolary young adult novel. Friends, I know I smoked a lot of pot in high school and college, but I have zero recollection of writing this or dropping it, though I did make a special folder. This probably won’t come as a surprise, but I’ve never met a new project that didn’t demand a new notebook or binder.
Supplies. What’s your poison?
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Betsy Lerner 
Yellow legal pads. Pen to paper, black on yellow. Set me down in front of the woodstove with a cup of tea and a pipe and let me be.
“What’s your poison?”
No longer supplies. I have a scattering of supplies here in this small room I refer to as my home office, but half the time I can’t find them, and three-quarters of the time I don’t need them.
The very small law firm I work for achieved its current girth six-and-a-half years ago, when it reached the final state of its three-stage financial implosion. As it devolved, as our ship began sinking and we scrambled for the lifeboats, set to sail the seas of home officing, there was much gear we had to toss overboard. When we were first going through it, I couldn’t believe how much store we had in office supplies and equipage. There had been a problem in inventory control. I hadn’t been with the firm very long (that gave rise to smoldering resentment on my part — the captain and other officers knew their ship was likely to sink when they invited me on board) and was astounded at what I found. 540 CD RW disks in their factory packaging. Four heavy-duty staplers. A legion of smaller staplers. And staple removers. And pens. Every pen any office worker could ever want, in triplicate. And various colors of markers, for highlighting various pertinent passages of documents. No one could remember the color code, but by god, we had the markers! I told the bookkeeper, “We could open an online legal office supplies store with all this.”
Binder clips. That would be my poison. They are so useful. Holding closed the bag of tostada chips. Holding closed the bag of loose-leaf tea. Holding closed the bag of cat food. I see a motif developing …
Sharpies (forgiving for horrible penmanship)
Post-its (good for little reminders of deliverables)
Pilot G-2 07 pens (see above about Sharpies)
Bubble gum (for a first kick)
Afternoon coffee (for a second kick)
I am so glad that someone finally asked, I am addicted to office supplies. As an eight year old I begged (Santa) my parents for a desk filled with everything imaginable to please my obsessed childhood brain. I got it all and more. I didn’t play house or play school I played office.
A lifetime later my adult children laughed when I entered a raffle to win over $500. in office supplies. I didn’t win but guess what they chipped in and bought me for Mother’s Day. God, I love my kids.
I am the stationary store for my family !!!!
They need it, I got it and if I don’t have it I’ll buy it in case maybe in the future I might need it to give to them.
everything online now. Google docs as backup. I remember floppy discs really were floppy. And it was often goodbye to your work if you stuck one in your pocket and sat down.
At some point, late into the teaching game, I realized that more than teaching, I loved school supplies. I love those colorful bic mechanical pencils with 2 leads. I also seem to have bought too many hanging file folders. I’m slowing down with many drafts now on my computer. I do have a plethora of discs with old old stuff on them.
It’s hard to know what to let go of. I have regretted tossing out old rejection letters but I am slowly building a new stash all be it on the computer.
You are not alone. And…isn’t that the most important thing?
Notebooks.
I love all office supplies in general but I have a real thing for pens (of many colors) and the fat kindergarten pencils.
Off-black pens (0.7, thanks for asking), graph notebooks, and Rhodia pads