Randy Hemingway's Blog

This past weekend, Faith and I went to Target, and it just so happened to be “Missouri’s Sales-Tax-Free Weekend On School Supplies Including Clothes, Shoes, Paper, Pencils, and Computers That Are Less Expensive Than Google’s Mainframe.” Yeah, the limit on how much a computer can cost to qualify for the tax-free weekend is like $5,000 or something ridiculous like that. All right, who in their right mind spends that much on a computer any more? Besides, what student needs a computer that powerful? For $5,000 (or maybe it was $3,200 but the thought still applies), you can get some serious computing power. Usually, a computer that expensive lands in hard-core gamer territory. Maybe, just maybe, you might need a $5k computer if you’re taking graphic design courses or something, but I doubt it. However, I digress.

Faith and I were in Target to get a fan for the living room. That last little tid-bit has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. I needed to get a notebook, because I was looking for a piece of paper in the house that morning and couldn’t find a suitably-sized piece of paper to jot down a couple of notes. I ended up using a stack of sticky-notes, which was far from what I wanted, but in the end, worked out just fine. So, to make up for the inexcusable lack of normal, college-ruled paper in our house, I set off in search of a notebook in Target. As soon as I arrived in the barren wasteland that was once the school/office supplies aisle, I quickly remembered that it was the tax-free weekend and that school/office supplies aisles should be avoided during this weekend.

I wandered down the aisle, my hopes of finding anything resembling the notebook I was looking for dwindling with each step. At the far end of the aisle, there was a mother (who looked to be of the age to have kids in school) and another lady, who, I’m assuming, was her mother. The mom and grandmom were discussing something and the grandmom kept picking up packages of copier paper, inspecting them, and putting them down. When I got a little closer, I overheard their conversation:

Mom: We need three reams of computer paper, whatever that is.

Grandmom: Well, this is printer paper. Will that work? It says three rings of computer paper?

Mom: Yeah, we need three reams of it.

Grandmom: What’s a ring of computer paper?

Mom: It (pointing to the list of school supplies that her kid’s school sent out) says we need three reams.

Grandmom: I didn’t know they made computer paper that was hole-punched. Is that what it means by rings of paper?

Mom: No, it says reams, not rings.

Grandmom: Rings?

Mom: No, reams.

Grandmom: What’s a ream?

Mom: I don’t know.

At this point, I turned and glanced in their direction, hoping to catch the grandmom’s eye and also hoping she would ask me what the supplies list was talking about. Fortunately, she made eye contact with me.

Grandmom (to me): What’s a ream?

Me (pointing at a ream of copier paper): It’s one of these packages.

Mom: Well, what type is computer paper?

Me: Any of these. It’ll say copier or printer paper but they’re all pretty much the same.

At that point, I kind of stepped out of the conversation and went back to deciding whether I should get the Batman notebook, the Hello Kitty notebook, or the plain-jane, monotone, Five-star brand notebook. The conversation went on:

Grandmom: This one’s got 400 and that’s got 700? How many are in a ream?

Mom: I don’t know.

Once more, I stepped in, feeling emboldened to do so from having already been involved in the conversation, and said, “There’s usually 500 sheets in a ream of paper.”

At this point, I quickly ducked out of the conversation, picked up the Hello Kitty notebook, thought better of it, replaced it with the plain-jane-monotone notebook, and left to find Faith. As I was leaving, though, I heard:

Grandmom: I guess we’ll get three of these. How were we supposed to know what reams were?

Mom: I don’t know. Why’d they call them reams? I’ve never heard of reams before.

And with that, their conversation faded out of range. I’m just glad I was there to help so they didn’t end up looking all over Target for three rings of hole-punched computer paper…whatever that is.

P.S.: When I finished writing this post, I went in Google search of a picture of a ream of paper, because I thought my posts needed some more visual impact. The first thing that came up was this question from Yahoo! Answers. Not only did I think the question was hilarious, considering the preceding content of this post, but the highly technical answers probably just served to confuse this poor lady even more.

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