The Weight Of Education

The other day I weighed my sixth grader's backpack. It weighed in at a hefty 33 pounds. Thirty-three pounds!! It's ridiculous for a kid to be hauling around 33 pounds of books and crud, ruining his back in the process. So then we went to the rolling backpack, which dismayed my senior because it's so uncool. I do see a lot more rolling backpacks now than when he was a sixth-grader so I don't think there's quite the stigma attached as there once was. And you have to consider how cool it's going to be to have major back problems by the time you hit your 20s. It'll be really cool to be all hunched over by 25.

The problem is, the rolling backpack lasts about a week (at the hands of a sixth-grader). Because it often twists about when going over bumps or whatnot, it then gets dragged briefly on its side which tears up the side edges. From the looks of my son's backpack, I think that maybe he just pulls it exclusively on its side, thereby saving on the wear and tear of the wheels. I'm not sure.

At any rate, the sides are now not connected to the bottom and it's only a matter of time before it rips more and stuff starts to come out. He'll be leaving a little trail everywhere he goes. Lovely. More lovely than that, even, is that we tried duct tape. Yep. What a pretty sight that was. That lasted for about a day before the tape curled up and it now looks worse than the original open-air look. Back to the drawing board. Here's what we really need (excuse the crude, caveman-like drawing):


That's right. We need wheels all around the entire backpack. That way, no matter how much it might fall to its side or get twisted around, it can just be rolled from that position. Perfect! I think I'm onto something here.


(I know the artwork is startling in its precision and beauty. I think I should switch careers. My job as an artist, as you can see, will pay about as much as my current job: nothing).