It’s back-to-school time. And you know what that means. No, not new backpacks, lunchboxes, or fresh hopes and dreams. It means crayons. Twenty-five cents a box. And I’m on a mission.

Every year, I wait with the patience of a hunting cat for Walmart’s markdown on crayons. Then I pounce—storming the aisles like a crazed preschool art teacher loading up my cart for our church’s Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. It’s not a shopping trip. It’s snagging crayons for Jesus.

Yes, I admit I’ve elbowed sweet little grandmas and blocked small children from reaching the shelf. Do I feel bad? Maybe slightly. But, hey, Jesus loves the little children in those third-world countries, and THEY NEED CRAYONS. I don’t budge until I get my stash.

But the social pressure finally got to me. I was tired of the judgmental stares while I blocked the aisle, cleaning out the cheap crayon shelf. (Surely if these people can afford $10.00 lattes at Starbucks, they can spring for the fifty-cent box of crayons and leave the twenty-five-cent boxes for me.)

So, I came upon a brilliant plan and decided to order the crayons online and have them shipped to me. The online site showed the boxes of crayons packaged into groups of six. Genius. No more explaining to the clerks why I’m hogging all the cheap crayons. No more having to fight my way down the aisle where groups of people are congregating right where I need to park my buggy to load up on crayons.

My 204 boxes of crayons arrived the other day—in a beat-up shipping box that was quite literally falling apart with boxes of crayons spilling out the sides. When I opened the top of the box, it looked like someone had played slam dunk with crayon boxes. Not only weren’t the boxes in a six-pack, but they were ripped, smashed, and torn open. Loose crayons rolled around the bottom of the box, anxious to escape. Not to mention that I was short several boxes, which are probably rolling around in the back of a UPS truck somewhere in Mississippi.

Later that afternoon, I received a moderate-sized box containing one—yes, one—box of crayons, packed in bubble wrap.
Okay, I learned THAT lesson the hard way. From now on, I’ll be schlepping back to Walmart to purchase my coveted crayons personally. So, the other day, I spent several minutes neatly stacking 160 boxes of crayons into my shopping cart. (To be nice, I actually left several boxes on the shelf.) I wheeled my purchase to the self-checkout and asked the clerk, who was busy on her cell phone, to punch in the quantity for me.

“Oh, we can’t do that,” she said in broken English. “We have to scan each one.”

I stared at her. “I have 160 boxes,” I said, as though she didn’t understand math. “The clerk did quantity for me the other day,” I explained, hoping she would call a manager or someone higher on the food chain to help.

“No, we can’t do that,” she repeated.

FINE. I whipped my buggy around and rolled to a cashier lane. Because at Walmart, where there are 30 checkout lanes, only two have actual cashiers. To have your items personally scanned by a human, you must wait. And wait. When I finally got to the front, the cashier effortlessly rang up the quantity for me and handed me my receipt. I grabbed a handful of bags to start loading up, when she snatched the bags out of my hand like Walmart was deducting them directly from her paycheck.

“We’re only allowed to give out two bags.”

My eyebrows disappeared into my forehead. “Two bags? For 160 boxes of crayons?”

“Yes. Store policy.”

“Fine,” I said nicely. “Then give me two bags.”

She obliged. Then, I returned to the self-checkout and snatched a proper number of bags. I spent the next several minutes bagging my purchases into ten full, heavy bags.

Of course, it wasn’t until I made it to the car that the perfect comeback to the cashier’s stinginess came to me.

“I don’t think I can fit all these crayons in two bags. Would you mind bagging them for me?”

Sigh. Too late. Always too late.

I’m starting to wonder if Walmart has a conspiracy against me. Perhaps I’m on their watchlist: Crayon Lady—Approach With Caution.