How back to school and online comment sections brought out the worst in people

It’s back to school time, and that means I have memories. Relax: This doesn’t mean I’m going to get all sappy on you. Because I have some scary memories. As in heart racing, breaking out in a cold sweat, and having to self-medicate with a large Dairy Queen chocolate dipped ice cream cone scary.

This is because these memories harken back to the day when I was a “mommy blogger.” It was around 2010, and I wrote a happy little post about back to school that had the mommy masses attacking me.

Today when I get an avalanche of hate comments, I just do a mass block/delete and enjoy my day, but this was a different time and I was a much more innocent person. Someone who believed in the innate goodness of people who posted comments on the internet. That person, by the way, no longer exists.

What got me into trouble was when I shared that I enjoyed school supply shopping with my children. We would make a day out of it by hitting up some stores and then having a late lunch.

This simple little story brought out so much hate I was astounded. The frightening comments were divided into three camps.

There were the moms who said I was robbing the PTA of money by going out and buying school supplies when I should be buying them from the PTA fundraiser.

I remember being told I was not just “robbing the school” but “robbing it blind for my own selfish shopping pleasure.”

Next up were (alleged) teachers who said parents should just cut a check to the school and let the teachers buy the school supplies so every kid would have the exact same thing and there would be no one-upmanship in terms of who had the better spiral notebook.

Apparently if your kid swagger walks into second grade school flashing a Five Star 100-page, wide ruled spiral notebook, it’s a power move that can sow discontent.

Then there was the “if I buy the school supplies they better not go into a communal school supply closet” groupies. These people or bots (I always hoped it was bots) were by far the worst.

This faction was dead set against the sharing of any school supplies. Comments were along the lines of “If I buy Kleenex for my kids, I want them to have that box Kleenex not some generic tissue from the Dollar Store.”

The same rationale was applied to crayons. They bought Crayola, and by God their child wasn’t going to share. It seemed as if for a lot of these parents their doomsday scenario was if all the crayons got put into bins and the premium brand was co-mingled with a store brand.

People were even commenting on how to label all of your child’s school supplies to keep the teacher/other kids from using them. It seems waterproof, tear-resistant vinyl labels were the key to keeping school supplies sequestered.

Besides being frightened by this school supply fury, I was sad. Why are grown adults going off on kids sharing pencils, paper and crayons?

Now, 15 years later and a much wiser and/or traumatized person, I know the answer to that question. It’s that the internet was and is an open invitation to unashamedly unleash your worst self.

To this day whenever I walk by a store laden with school supplies, I always think about those comments. Did those people get over themselves? Get help? Or get worse?

I hope it’s not the latter, because if you raged that hard about school supplies a decade and half ago, I’m afraid to think about what you’re doing now.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and at snarkyinthesuburbs.com.