You people know I’m not one to say “I told you so.” Unless I happened to be right about something, which happens every 17 years like clockwork.
Remember that time I predicted you’d lose your hair? You see how that turned out, don’t you?
But anyhoo, last week I predicted that with the Fourth of July come and gone, soul-crushing back-to-school ads would start to appear. Greedy advertisers with stovepipe hats and long mustaches would start slapping up their storefront fliers to announce the premature death of summer.
Then they’ll cackle all sinister like. I tell you, there is nothing that greedy advertisers with long mustaches like more than coming to your house with buckets of army ants while you’re trying to have a picnic.
I give you exhibits A through 3.
Staples. That fine purveyor of all your office needs has launched an ad campaign featuring a 15-percent-off Back to School Savings Pass. At the very top of their flier you’ll find photos of crayons, glue and Bic pens. A little lower are the packets of No. 2 pencils, side-coil notebooks and dry-erase markers.
But wait! There’s more!
“Buy a Back to School Savings Pass for $10,” declares the joy-killing ad. “Includes binders, notebooks, backpacks and more!”
They should probably include a sale on super-absorbent towels because don’t you just feel like sobbing hopelessly until Christmas or so?
Office Max, meanwhile, goes right for the jugular: “Time to get ready!” shrieks their message, which also features a colorful ball of twine, or possibly a uranium molecule, at the top of the page. I suppose it’s meant to represent the artsy, craftsy good times of school daze, but to me it looks like something large and heavy enough to crush the pier at Old Orchard Beach.
“Big Back 2 School Deals” says their ad. And it might as well come with a booming laugh and a sinister twist of that villainous mustache.
Scattered among the ads for staplers, Scotch tape and White-Out are photos of kids who are apparently ecstatic to be thinking about school in early July. The kids are playing air guitar, dancing and smiling brightly. You want to believe that they are elated about the prospect of getting back to class, but the sad truth is that these poor children have been rendered insane by the magnitude of these savings.
Farwell School in Lewiston. It’s a new school with the latest technology. And they are using that technology to pour ice water directly into your shorts.
The big message board out front starts with a nice message: “School’s out. Drive safely,” or something to that effect. If it stopped there, we’d be just fine. But no. The messages on this board scroll from one to the next, and who could have foreseen THAT kind of advanced, technological wizardry coming to the world?
In the second message, the long-mustachioed people of Farwell decided to go all Mayan on our collective butt. “School begins on August 28!” announces their Star Trekesque sign, and it’s every bit as foreboding as a downtown sandwich board that warns of the coming apocalypse.
Now you have an exact number to hang on the pressure of a dwindling summer, and doesn’t that make you want to spray 100 SBF sunblock directly into your eyes so you don’t have to look at that sign anymore?
It’s coming buoys and gulls. One day you’re frowning over these dismal ads and the next, you’re thinking about getting snow tires on the Toyota and wondering how you’ll come up with $9,000 to buy half a tank of heating oil. Bikinis and Frisbees one week, school buses and ear muffs the next.
Your best bet is to hunker down someplace like Hannaford (“Summertime Savings are Easy!”) or Kohl’s (“Summer’s Hottest Sale Just got even Hotter!”) and refuse to leave. Put on your favorite plaid shorts, pull those black socks all the way up to your knees and just dig in. I’d suggest you do something with your hair, as well, but man, it’s thinning by the hour now.
As foretold by prophecy.
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