She did this a couple of years ago… I discovered it on her blog. I got permission to post it to my Facebook wall then, and now I’m sharing it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did 🙂 She really, really, rocks.
Oh, the joys of having a cheap parent. (cont’d) From Rachael to Mom
As I get ready to tag along with my mother to bookstores, shoe stores and uniform stores this weekend in preparation to slave away for another 10 months (hoping you can get how excited I am), I declared to her multiple times in ADVANCE that I was picking the stores and I was choosing the items, much to her dismay, because it’s become quite obvious to both of us that I inherited NONE of my mother’s cheapness. Read this story and enjoy the shock, horror and embarrassment I felt one year ago! 😀
It was mid to late August and we were finishing up back-to-school shopping. Since all the major textbooks were bought already, we decided to stop at a Woolworth to pick up stationery and art supplies from the wide array of low-priced, slightly to moderately damaged, made-in-China inventory. Halfway through shopping, my mom tells me to go and look for notebooks. I automatically head for the nice, decent looking Mead hardcover ones.
“$129 for one? That’s not SO bad…”
Meanwhile, my mom immediately heads for the Clearance section, and she just so happens to see a stack of 7 notebooks, all wrapped up nicely in plastic; $550 for all 7, which is actually a really good price for 7 books. She knows the store wants to get rid of the books quickly, explaining the cheap price, which obviously meant there must be a flaw somewhere, but the price was just too good (cheap?) to resist. Also, at the top of the stack, the BACK of one book was showing, not the front, which also should have raised a red flag. One book would cost around $80, and for my US followers, one book would be around 93 cents, making the total cost of all 7 books come up to about $6.50. 7 Mead books would cost $903 ($10.62 US).
A $353 difference? I knew there was NO WAY my mom was budging on this one. While we’re paying for the stuff, the cashier says to my mother:
“You sure you want these books? The pages tear easily”
“Yes, we’ll take them!” She even turned to me and curtly instructed: “Handle them with care.”
Ugh.
“Well, it won’t be so bad”, I thought as I walked out of the store.
Boy, was I dead-ass WRONG.
The Saturday before the first day of school, I was packing my bag with some of the stuff we’d gotten from Woolworth. As I tore the plastic off the books, I made a truly terrifying, shocking discovery that immediately triggered my “pissed off” senses.
Spiderman.
I started panicking as I frantically looked through the rest of the books. 2? Spiderman. 3? Spiderman. 4, 5, 6, 7. All 7 books had Spiderman on the front cover.
My mom had bought me 7 Spiderman books.
Pissed off as all hell, I took one and showed it to my mom. She started DYING of laughter. This wasn’t helping at all. (“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize! Well I’m not buying you new books!”)
To make matters worse, my brother kept on begging me for one for weeks! >.
My lunch group laughed at me when they asked me why I had Spiderman books and I had to tell them why, and I kinda had no choice but to laugh along with them. I even started cracking up when I was writing this!
The second day of school I immediately headed to the school bookstore and bought 7 more Mead hardcover books and used them for more major subjects like Math and Physics. When I carried the Spiderman books, I carried them face DOWN at all times. But the most gut-wrenching experience I had with those books was when I had to make one of them my English Language book. Whenever I had a piece of work to submit and everyone would put their books on the teacher’s desk at once, I just put mine up there really quickly without looking into my teacher’s face. You don’t know how it killed me inside to do that :$ (and that cashier was definitely right about the pages)
I can now emphatically say DAT NAH REACH ME AGAIN DIS YEAR!
It was mid to late August and we were finishing up back-to-school shopping. Since all the major textbooks were bought already, we decided to stop at a Woolworth to pick up stationery and art supplies from the wide array of low-priced, slightly to moderately damaged, made-in-China inventory. Halfway through shopping, my mom tells me to go and look for notebooks. I automatically head for the nice, decent looking Mead hardcover ones.
“$129 for one? That’s not SO bad…”
Meanwhile, my mom immediately heads for the Clearance section, and she just so happens to see a stack of 7 notebooks, all wrapped up nicely in plastic; $550 for all 7, which is actually a really good price for 7 books. She knows the store wants to get rid of the books quickly, explaining the cheap price, which obviously meant there must be a flaw somewhere, but the price was just too good (cheap?) to resist. Also, at the top of the stack, the BACK of one book was showing, not the front, which also should have raised a red flag. One book would cost around $80, and for my US followers, one book would be around 93 cents, making the total cost of all 7 books come up to about $6.50. 7 Mead books would cost $903 ($10.62 US).
A $353 difference? I knew there was NO WAY my mom was budging on this one. While we’re paying for the stuff, the cashier says to my mother:
“You sure you want these books? The pages tear easily”
“Yes, we’ll take them!” She even turned to me and curtly instructed: “Handle them with care.”
Ugh.
“Well, it won’t be so bad”, I thought as I walked out of the store.
Boy, was I dead-ass WRONG.
The Saturday before the first day of school, I was packing my bag with some of the stuff we’d gotten from Woolworth. As I tore the plastic off the books, I made a truly terrifying, shocking discovery that immediately triggered my “pissed off” senses.
Spiderman.
I started panicking as I frantically looked through the rest of the books. 2? Spiderman. 3? Spiderman. 4, 5, 6, 7. All 7 books had Spiderman on the front cover.
My mom had bought me 7 Spiderman books.
Pissed off as all hell, I took one and showed it to my mom. She started DYING of laughter. This wasn’t helping at all. (“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize! Well I’m not buying you new books!”)
To make matters worse, my brother kept on begging me for one for weeks! >.
My lunch group laughed at me when they asked me why I had Spiderman books and I had to tell them why, and I kinda had no choice but to laugh along with them. I even started cracking up when I was writing this!
The second day of school I immediately headed to the school bookstore and bought 7 more Mead hardcover books and used them for more major subjects like Math and Physics. When I carried the Spiderman books, I carried them face DOWN at all times. But the most gut-wrenching experience I had with those books was when I had to make one of them my English Language book. Whenever I had a piece of work to submit and everyone would put their books on the teacher’s desk at once, I just put mine up there really quickly without looking into my teacher’s face. You don’t know how it killed me inside to do that :$ (and that cashier was definitely right about the pages)
I can now emphatically say DAT NAH REACH ME AGAIN DIS YEAR!
