Backpack To Basics

What the hell are the kids up to? What the hell are they carrying around in those huge backpacks? I’d suspect them of being up to something, if they didn’t look so downtrodden with the weight of it all.

When I went to school, my small leather satchel usually contained one book, a very old banana that was trying to change shape, a cicada shell to put on the back of Sally’s jumper because she was so cute, and a pencil case. Not always with pencils in it. That was it. I seemed to learn stuff. I can do a bit of arithmatic in my head and I can fudge my way through a day at work. Sure, my spelling remains atroshuss, but more fourth form text books were never going to be the answer to that little dilemma.

But these days, there appears to be some disconnect between the promise of the interconnectivity of the entire planet and the amount that these kids are dragging around in their school cases. Surely they should be dancing around with a 1 gig USB drive attached to the same chain as their bus-pass, which has all their school books and homework all loaded up on it from the home computer, ready to shunt into the networked laptop at school.

I’m seeing the opposite. I saw a kid the other day dragging his second backpack behind him on a sales-rep trolley because his little bowed beast-of-burden back was already loaded up with the primary backpack. Both the bags had the school emblem on them too, so it was obviously expected of him to be that loaded up.

When I was a bus driver (see, I told you my schooling was just fine and helped elevate me to the headiest heights of achievement) I used to regularly carry a cute little girl on my afternoon schools run. She was 5 (and would hold up one tiny, outstretched hand to demonstrate the exact number of years) and was small enough that, under the weight of her ridiculous school backpack, she would actually go down on all fours to climb up the stairs into the bus. It broke my heart each afternoon, but she didn’t expect any different, so didn’t seem too put out by it.

Once we were near her home and she’d abseiled out of the bus, she’d race me down the street. I’d always give her a bit of start. Partly so I could keep her in my eye-line, and partly because I was always amused by the sight of that huge backpack, seemingly levitating by itself as it charged off. (Nothing could be seen of the girl from behind. It was deep enough that you couldn’t even get a clear view of her shoes)

As I’d draw level, I’d see her working away underneath the straps, bouncing up and down, little arms pumping like a 200 metre sprinter. The backpack had so much mass, that it would remain completely level and her shoulders would only come into contact with the straps at the top of each bounce. She was visually reminiscent of a locomotive, with all the movement of the pistons happening around the wheels, and the seeming suspension of the boiler, travelling along unfussed by all the activity.

So, anyway, I hope all this bookishness is going to add up to some very clever people, because their little scoliosed backs are not going to be up to the task of manual labour, once they graduate.