Field notes, the uniform shop

The last week of August, and the uniform shop has the same notes every year.

The sizes are gone by the second day. Not the unusual ones, the middle ones, so the child who is exactly average is the one sent home with a shirt a size up and a promise.

A mother at the counter with three lists, one per school, on three different sheets of paper, because the schools do not use the same supplier and never will.

The school WhatsApp group, where someone photographed the list and everyone else photographed the photograph, so the shop is handed a picture of a picture and reads it without complaint.

The shop that takes orders by message. No website, no cart. A voice note with a name, a class and a phone number, and a bag with the name written on it in marker two days later.

The price, which nobody argues with. In a city where every price gets argued, this one is paid in silence, because the alternative is a child in the wrong clothes on the first morning.

The father sent on the second trip, holding the phone up so the assistant can talk to the mother directly.

The shoe shop next door, which has not advertised and is full.

The schools reopen around now, depending on the school, and some already have. The demand built itself. The date was set by someone else, printed on a letter, and known to every household in the district since June.

No lesson today, except that a real deadline needs no countdown.