My backpack

The backpack I have isn’t that new. I believe I bought it the end of 1998. I remember having to buy a new backpack just about every school year growing up because the old one had worn out. I don’t remember all of them. I remember a purple elephant one I had one year though. The other kids liked to pull tlhe trunk and that made me mad. But the backpack I have right now is one I always wanted. It doesn’t have all the pockets for water bottles and cell phones and MP3 players and elastic cords going across it and 22 other pockets for various sundry items. It isn’t made out of five different coordinating colors of fabric. It is black. It has three pockets, one large one, one small one, and one flat one on the front of the small one. But the best feature is the bottom. It has a leather bottom. And that means I’m smart. I’ve arrived in the educational world.

I am sure that most people won’t make the connection between a leather bottomed backpack and being smart, so I’ll explain.

I remember my dad working on his Masters degree when I was very little. He’d sit at the table doing homework and I’d sit at the table with him doing my “homework” (scribbling on scraps of paper). Every so often I remember hearing a sound that to me sounded like a pot falling off the counter but really it was a mouse trap and Dad would get up and throw the mouse out the back door. I remember going to the university library and book store with him and feeling smart just walking around a college campus. And I remember his backpack. It was a lighter blue with a leather bottom. A backpack with a leather bottom meant in my mind that it was strong enough to hold all of the books a smart person in college would need. And I always wanted to be smart enough to have a backpack with a leather bottom.

Now I am in graduate school getting my own Masters degree. And I’m so proud that I have a backpack with a leather bottom. No other backpack, or any other kind of bag, would do for me, it just wouldn’t fit my picture of what kind of bag you are supposed to have when you are smart and in graduate school.