Dear retail store manager:

Hello.  My name is Sean Shannon.  Although you probably don’t know me personally, if you have a retail store in the Toledo area, chances are I’ve shopped in your store.  (Unless you manage a Wal*Mart, in which case I will never ever ever set foot in your store, you union-busting, community-destroying, worker-neglecting, discriminatory pieces of crap.)  I like to comparison shop so I get the best value for my money, so throughout the course of a year I visit dozens upon dozens of stores.

As August draws near, my mind naturally turns to the annual back-to-school sales and promotions that most retailers put on in the weeks leading up to classes starting for so many.  As an educator and a writer, I look forward to these sales so I can stock up on supplies for both my teaching and writing careers.  I’ve always looked forward to these sales, because I am one of those rare creatures who actually likes to learn new things.

However, in the course of my lifetime, I have noticed that these sales have started earlier and earlier.  When I was young, my mother would drive me down to the K-Mart a mile south of my house (now closed thanks to a stupid Wal*Mart moving in kitty-corner from it) in August so I could get school supplies and, when I was younger, new clothes.  Once I started going to a private school, I had to turn elsewhere for new clothes because everyone there ridiculed me for wearing K-Mart clothes, but we don’t need to get into that.  The point I want to emphasize here is that August used to be the time when back-to-school season started, giving peoplea few weeks to get to your stores and get their supplies and other sundries for the new school year.

This August start time soon moved to late July, though, and since then the start time has been creeping further and further into the early days of July.  I have reports from friends in North Carolina that one retail store there actually set up their back-to-school displays in June.  June!  I know the religious schools here, sadists that they are, often don’t end their school years until after the middle of the month, so some students may have had two weeks, or less, between when their school year ended and when they had to deal with huge displays in this store reminding them that their next school year was starting soon.  (I won’t mention the retailer’s name here, but let’s just say that if angry kids decide to throw eggs at the manager of this store, that retailer had better hope that the eggs aren’t on target.)

Although I look forward to both back-to-school sales and the start of a new school year, I am without question in a very small minority in this regard.  Most children dread the start of a new school year, and given that I deal with the products of the modern-day educational system in my teaching career and I hear countless horror stories from them about what schooling is like these days, I can’t blame them in the slightest.  Putting up back-to-school displays in July or even June only serves to remind these children of the horrors that are coming sooner than they’d like.  It is torture, and it is wrong.  Even for those of us who like back-to-school season, this makes your stores harder to shop in because we have to deal with even more screaming kids than usual, on top of the ones who won’t shut up because their parents won’t buy them the latest overpriced, hyper-branded toy.

This problem, annoying as it is, is far from the biggest problem confronting our nation right now.  However, it is one that I am sick and tired of putting up with.  That is why I will be writing my congresswoman and senators to propose legislation that any retail store manager who puts up a back-to-school display before the first of August should not only be subjected to excruciating torture, but that this torture be televised live on pay-per-view, where viewers can text their torture requests to a particular number at $10 a pop and see their requests acted out live for a large, warmly-applauding audience.  The money we generate this way can then go to help solve more serious problems, such as child poverty and malnutrition, not to mention child abuse.

If you want to avoid this fate, simply stop putting out your back-to-school displays before August.  I will thank you, and the children of America will thank you.

Sincerely,
Ms. Sean Shannon

PS, Just to clarify, since I’ve met some of you under other circumstances before: When I say “excruciating torture,” I don’t mean the fun kind.