The pencils, the pencils...they call to me.

People often ask me if I miss being a teacher. I usually just smile and say, "not too much," while the real answer plays in my head: "I miss my paycheck, but that's about it."

But lately, I've had kind of an utz, a sort of nagging, vaguely depressed feeling. Like something was missing. Then, over the course of the Labor Day Sale weekend, I figured it out. I am suffering from school supply withdrawal.

Granted, my back-to-school shopping used to take place in the middle of July thanks to the draconian rules of Florida schools that seemed to drag us back a little sooner every year, but I still got a little charge out of trolling the aisles of Office Depot, picking out cute paper fasteners, and little bins to hold them, trying to find just the perfect planner (big enough to write a lot on each date, but small enough to fit neatly in my shoulder bag). I had to hunt for my favorites: the perfect bright yellow of a Dixon Ticonderoga #2, accept no cheap substitutes; Bic Medium pens with the blue ink that never ran out on me; Executive steno pads for writing everything from class notes to letter home to anxious mothers .

Of course, since I never loaned out my personal supplies, my shopping also included loading up on boxes and boxes of those 50 cents-a-dozen pens and pencils, and $1.00-a-ream packs of wide-rule notebook paper, to head off the inevitable "I ain't got no {insert school supply here}" excuses that rained down day after day in my classroom. [For those of you who still don't think teachers are underpaid, factor in the cost of the school supplies they buy for your children. That's where a lot of it goes, folks.]

Now, I work a straight job, in an environment where the supplies are provided for me (how novel!) and I have no reason to haunt Staples unless one of the big wigs runs out of printer ink. In fact, that's exactly where I found myself today. I found a few bucks in my purse, and on the way out I grabbed a pack of Ticonderogas. Just for old times sake.