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The September Stories Issue

Remember the Trapper Keeper?

Here's a hilarious list of things you'll want to buy, even though you're totally not "going back to school."

This story appears in the September issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Welcome back to school! By "school," we of course mean the time of year when people who are five to 30 years younger than you are actually going back to school. And by "back," we mean it's pretty much the same as every other month of the year for you, when you go to your job and maybe take a personal day on a Friday so you can spend the weekend in Vermont.

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But just because you don't actually go to school anymore doesn't mean you should miss out on the thrill of spending a bunch of money in September. We've compiled this list of school supplies to help you make sure you're fully prepared for not going back to school.

FANCY PENS

Yeah, there are free Bics at work, but you're a professional person and you deserve to have a professional-person pen for a week before you lose it and go back to using the Bics.

BINDER CLIPS

They make rainbow-colored binder clips now!! They are so cute!! And you did use a binder clip once, in 2014.

PROFESSIONAL CARTOONIST– LEVEL SHARPIES

You're not a cartoonist but… maybe you should be? Maybe your thing could be that you're so bad at drawing, it's punk? Spend 25 minutes testing out these Sharpies in the store and text your doodles to friends before deciding, Fuck it, and spending $9 on a marker.

BACKPACK

There is a scientific concept where if you spend 10,000 hours looking at other people carrying around little Swedish backpacks, you will buy that backpack. Well, your time is up.

HAND SANITIZER

The cooler weather means cold season, so make sure to stock up on hand sanitizer that smells so strongly of sweet pea that everyone else on the subway will faint.

EVERY SINGLE SIZE MOLESKINE NOTEBOOK

You have a lot of different-sized bags, and you don't know which one you'll be carrying when you realize you need a notebook to write down a quote from the new Fast and Furious movie!!!

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OLD-FASHIONED TIN LUNCH BOX

You're at Walmart; it's at Walmart. Surely as an adult you can be the kind of person who has the fortitude to carry a tin lunch box every day.

STATIONERY

This will come in handy if you either (a) become the kind of person who sends random thank-you notes or (b) suddenly move away from all your friends and your parents kick you off their unlimited data family phone plan.

PROTRACTOR

If there's one thing every adult knows, it's that we all use protractors on a daily basis.

TRAPPER KEEPER

There's literally no use for this, but oh my God, you can still get Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers?!? Maybe you could keep your taxes in it?!??! Maybe this will finally convince you to stop throwing away your taxes??!

POUCHES

You've spent all this money and you don't want anything to break, so you're going to need to buy approximately 700 pouches—one for your pencils, your iPad, your iMac, your phone. Buy a pouch for everything on this list. Then buy a pouch to put this list in.

OFF-THE-SHOULDER SHIRT

No one knows why this is mandatory now, but it is.

GOOGLY EYES

THEY'RE ONLY A DOLLAR.