BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
EDGEWOOD -- School has just started, so everyone's backpacks should be practically empty, right?
Right, parents say.
Well . . . not exactly, says Phyllis Bellon, 11.
She's standing over the contents of her bag, which she has kindly dumped on the floor at my request. With her mother looking alternately surprised and horrified, Phyllis says, "I've got a lot of weird stories."
Evidently so. At Turkeyfoot Middle School, she's been lugging around the following: a broken mirror, a friendship bracelet, her diary, a book, three plain erasers, a Santa-shaped eraser, a penguin-shaped eraser, a heart-shaped eraser, an eraser with a pin stuck in it, an eraser covered with Sailor Moon symbols, a fuzzball, the world's smallest dice, a mood ring, a miniature pencil, a stack of origami papers and a paper with all her friends' signatures on it. There's also some school-related stuff. Two folders, a math book, a geography book, a homework planner and a "protract-whatever," as Phyllis calls it.
She pulls a broken pencil from her bag. It has been oddly reassembled with staples and eraser fluid.
"This is a very long and strange story," she says.
Try some pencil-cillin
You can tell a lot about kids from their backpacks, which is why I peeked into a few this week. Phyllis, for instance, is destined to become a doctor.
Take her pencil story. In the fourth and fifth grades, she and a friend started a pencil hospital. They named their pencils, made little sickbeds for them and came up with interesting ways to repair them.
"Some people broke their pencils on purpose, 'cause it was fun," Phyllis says.
And all this took place during recess, right?
Nah, says Phyllis. During class.
Cool. A creative mind beats a plodding one any day.
Phyllis says she's carrying around all this stuff for good luck. She is, after all, a sixth-grader in a big new school.
Phyllis' mom is looking at the origami papers, which kids fold to make flower and animal shapes.
What is this? she asks her daughter.
I'll just let the two of them discuss that.
My next subject is Sarah Caston, an eighth-grader at the middle school.
Sarah's bag serves as a hanger for her collection of six key chains, none of which have keys on them. Apparently, this is another dimension of young people today. Call it the Beanie Baby sickness.
"A lot of people just pick, like, an animal," Sarah says. "My friend decided she liked lions, so she just collects a lot of lion stuff. A lot of my friends like monkeys."
Other than the key chains, Sarah's bag is light. It's the beginning of the year, after all.
This means Mandy Adkins, a sophomore at Scott High School, has only six notes stuffed into her backpack. One is from a friend named Emily Gail.
"I cannot handle any more excitement today," Emily writes. "I would have a heart attack or something!"
At the top, she's scribbled, "Cows!" and, "Cows chew cud!" Mandy explains.
"We love cows," she says.
"We actually have a Web site," says Johanna Meadows, a junior at Scott. "We had this thing that if you cut it out and taped it a certain way, it formed a cow."
Why cows? I ask.
"They're just fun," Johanna says. "We had names we gave each other. I was Beef."
"I was Udders," says Mandy.
Hmm. Maybe next they'll start a pencil hospital.
At R.C. Hinsdale Elementary School in Edgewood, a group of parents said they doubted much was in their kids' bags. By the middle of the year, though . . .
"Even though it's bulging, there's "nothing in there,' " says Anita Herthel, quoting her daughter, Jordan.
Last year, when Jordan was in second grade, she sneaked her mom's lipstick into her bag and put some on at school. Then Dad showed up to deliver the glasses she'd forgotten.
"She was totally busted," says Keith Herthel, chuckling. "We had a long talk about that," Mrs. Herthel says.
Despite the parents' certainty, we do find some stuff in their kids' bags. Second-grader Corey Toon has a baseball card. His brother Sean, a kindergartner, has a shiny container of pencil lead that he borrowed from his dad's desk.
Fourth-grader Nicholas Boyd is rich: He's got a $2 bill, a Susan B. Anthony dollar and a silver dollar. Also an entire turkey sandwich and one pack of chocolate chip cookies.
Um, Nicholas? You do realize lunch is for eating?
"It was really smooshed," he says.
This decides it. Next spring I'll take another peek into backpacks, to see what might be growing there.
I'm betting I'll find an entire town of pencil people.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE