Cash registers chime with the sound of back to school

Deirdre Newman

For the summer, 14-year-old Dion Domurat has a fair amount of free

reign to dress as he pleases.

On Saturday he sported a black shirt with silhouetted skulls and

bright orange flames leaping up the front of it. On his hand was a

large ring from Thailand that extended over the end of his middle

finger and contained an onyx stone.

But clothes like these are not acceptable for the incoming

Estancia High School freshman to wear to school said his mother, Ann

Inthapanti.

So she and fiancee Neil Ginoza took Dion to pick up some clothes

with a more conservative look.

“It’s fine with us,” Neil said of the clothes Dion had picked out

so far, which were mostly solid-color pants like khakis. “There’s no

flaming skulls or anything.”

With a mere three days before school starts, the area malls and

stores like Kmart and Office Depot were doing brisk business

Saturday.

At Office Depot, Clark Severson demonstrated how to figure out

exponents on a calculator to son Jonathan, who said he was looking

forward to going back to school.

“I’ve had too long a vacation and I’m bored,” Jonathan said.

Casey Duckworth, 8, who will be in the third grade at Kaiser

Elementary School this fall, had the help of mom Kara and grandma

Pamela Greene for her back-to-school shopping.

Kara got some blue folders for classes, some dry erase markers for

the teacher, lots of pencils and a Snickers bar, “which is the most

important thing,” joked mom.

Kara said she was looking forward to school starting so she could

meet her new teacher.

Office Depot has a 5% Back to Schools Program, where customers can

select a school to receive a credit of 5% of qualifying

back-to-school merchandise purchases.

Over at Payless Shoes, five-year-old Angel Jimenez, who is going

into the first grade at Whittier Elementary School, was torn between

tennis shoes and sandals featuring the characters from the Japanese

animation series, “Yu-Gi-Oh!”

“It’s going good,” said grandma Arlene Wester. “We just need socks

and underwear now.”

School starts on Tuesday.