Student Goes Record 3 Days Into Term Before Losing/Exhausting All Pens, Erasers, Glue Sticks

Halfway through the first week – twenty-four hours longer than her previous record.

Jerusalem, September 6 – A local elementary schooler established a new personal mark today, making it halfway through the first week of the academic year without using up or failing to keep track of her main school supplies – a full twenty-four hours longer than her previous record, established in September of last year.

Eden Buzaglo, 10, began fifth grade late last week with a full stock of writing implements, erasers, adhesive materials, folders, notebooks, and other accoutrements that her parents had purchased over the previous two months to prepare her to greet the 2023-24 term. Buzaglo’s parents, in particular her mother Rivka, always make sure to get their hands on the school supply list for the following academic year as soon as possible – often as early as the first week of July. That approach ensures relaxed access in stores to the desired materials, as the vast majority of school supply shopping takes place nearly two months later.

Whether intentionally or not, three Septembers in a row, Eden has shown remarkable consistency in losing or exhausting many of the essential items that Rivka worked hard to procure. In second grade, it took Eden more than two weeks to run out of both pencils and erasers; in third grade, six schools days; last year, five and a half days; and now, four-and-a-half. Experts remain uncertain that this record will ever be broken.

“[Eden] doesn’t have that many more opportunities ahead,” explained analyst Tamar Friedman, and educational consultant with a background in statistics. “There’s a narrow window in most children’s schooling during which a certain set of easily-lost school supplies form a standard part of the start-of-year inventory. For most, it does not extend even into middle school, and for no one does it persist into high school. In this case, as well, it looks like [Rivka Buzaglo] will refrain from equipping her second daughter with the full complement of supplies at the outset next time around, to forestall this very phenomenon.”

The overall record for the fastest loss or use of one’s entire set of school supplies stands at seven minutes and eight seconds into the school year. In 2003, nine-year-old Sofia Yaroslevsky of Bat-Yam packed the entire supply of classroom and homework accessories her parents had bought – enough, they thought, to last at least through the following January – and then left her backpack on the local bus as she struggled with a separate package of cakes she wished to distribute to her class. Yaroslevsky realized only after the bus pulled away, too late to retrieve her bag; the bus company’s lost-and-found never recorded it, meaning someone walked off with Sofia’s entire fourth-grade supply. Had Sofia caught the bus on time – she missed the scheduled departure because of the aforementioned cakes – she might have established an even more impressive record, possibly a negative number.

Please support our work through Patreon.
Buy In The Biblical Sense: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B92QYWSL