Cal's Backpack

Every night after the kids are in bed, I check their backpacks for papers or other “goodies” they brought home from school that day.  Going in to this exercise, I hope to find keepers, true works of art produced by their own minds and hands; usually I find half-finished or scribbled drawings or, worse, wads of I-don’t-know-whats with a touch of color here and there.  Why their teachers send these things home is beyond me.

I say every night, but almost every week has at least one day where they’re going back to school with the same papers shoved in their backpacks the day before.  I don’t feel too bad about this.  Afterall, they’ll be coming back home along with the current day’s worth of papers, and I can just catch up then.

Exhausted last night, I deferred the backpack check to this morning and climbed into bed early, after 9pm but before 10pm.  To my surprise, Ella’s backpack had only what I sent her to school with yesterday – an extra pair of shoes and a change of clothes.  No (wads of) paper.  Excellent.

Cal’s backpack was heavy when I lifted it.  Clearly, it had more than paper in it.  When I opened it, I also found no (wads of) paper.  Here’s what I did find:

·         Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury
·         Spectrum Math, Grade 2 workbook
·         Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection
·         Summer Bridge Activities, Grades 1-2 workbook

The first book was a gift from Grandma; the other three books were Cal’s purchases from Barnes and Noble… his choice in how he wanted to spend what we said was his spendable money.  All of these were the things that he chose to bring to school yesterday to show his friends and to possibly use during his “free choice” time in the day.  No toy cars.  No Lego Millennium Falcon.  No Ninja Turtles figurines.  Books.

While thoughts like “are we raising a geek?” pop into my head when Cal does stuff like this, I find Cal’s choices to be reinforcement that we’re doing something right.  That Cal is choosing books over toys and electronics (not that he really has many) pleases his dad and me to no end.  And, really, if we are raising a geek, so be it.  I was a geek and think I turned out fairly balanced (my sister may argue otherwise).

I'm not sure exactly what he went to school with this morning.  I did see him at our "library" (re-purposed bedside table with two shelves and a door) just before we left this morning.  And his backpack was heavy again.  I am intrigued and will definitely check his backpack for papers tonight.