A Tip Towards Childhood

I just got back from Target where I bought Johnny and Grace new backpacks. Grace has used her Dora backpack for four years, and it was time to get a new one. It has a hole in the bottom of it, and I had visions of her walking down the hall with important papers trailing behind. I'm sure you know my kids well enough to know there's no way I'd get off without getting Johnny a new backpack also. Especially since it's his big year entering Kindergarten. David gave me a stern talking-to last night when I told him where I was going today. He made me promise I wouldn't come back with gaudy character-splashed backpacks with the likes of Diego, Hannah Montana, Disney Princesses or super heroes of any kind. He wanted the kids to enter this school year a little more grown up, a little more refined, with personal styles a little more sophisticated.

I was all for it until I started thinking about it on the way there. Just after I told them that they could only pick a "plain" backpack, one with no characters on it, I realized how silly that must sound to a five and almost seven year old. That would be like David having to go into one of his favorite stores, like JCrew, and only being able to pick out a shirt that had baby dinosaurs on it. Ridiculous. I then said, "You know what? You can pick a backpack with characters on it. You can pick any backpack you want (as long as it's under twenty dollars)."

They both went pretty wild when they saw the selection: Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Batman, Superman, Hello Kitty, My Little Pony, Dora, Diego, stuff like that. Johnny picked up a black "plain" pack that was pretty cool--even had a separate zipper for the cell phone he doesn't own. It had cool bungee zippers and compartments and I thought for sure David would approve. I asked him if was sure he wanted that one and he was certain. Certainty lasted only until he spied the Spiderman backpack with wheels. A backpack with wheels is what he really wanted, so I let him get it. I couldn't interest Grace in anything except the oversized My Little Pony backpack with a special brush to use to brush the sparkly pink pony hair attached to the back. In my mind it was a little juvenile for her, but she had eyes for nothing else. I did think about the other kids in her first-grade class that might snicker that she carries a My Little Pony backpack, the idea being that Little Ponies are for babies and kids under three. That's just my thinking, I guess, because both Johnny and Grace assured me they weren't just for babies.

I came away just glad my kids are still the ages where things as simple as backpacks with pictures on them make them happy inside.