The School Bag Drama

Just three days to go until a major event whose significance for our family is comparable to the Miracle of Bern (1954), the moon landing (1969), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) or the launch of Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream (2005). Our daughter is starting school!

But before she starts school, the school gods have set a few hurdles in our way. First of all, we have to choose a suitable school bag. This isn't as easy as it sounds.
When I started school back then – in a distant land before our time – there were, if I remember correctly, exactly two school bag brands: Scout and McNeill. Each of these had one model available in two different colours. So you had exactly four options to choose from and could make a decision in a very manageable amount of time.

  As our daughter's well-being and social life are very important to us, we promised her that we would take «coolness» into account in our selection process.

Things are different today. There are now around four dozen companies producing school bag storage solutions: satchels, rucksacks, wheeled cases, shoulder bags or briefcases, just like the ones the posh kids from the Schüler-Union used to carry. And each of these companies offers its models in a bewildering array of colours, shapes, materials and designs.

As befits modern, responsible parents, we naturally began looking into the «school satchel» project months before our child started school. As a couple of academics, we didn't want to make an irrational impulse buy, but rather an informed decision, choosing the ideal school bag that would prevent postural problems in our child, made from robust yet environmentally friendly materials, and for which we wouldn't have to sell off our non-existent family silver.
Our daughter also insisted that she wanted a really cool school bag and not some totally daft one that all her classmates would tease her about, so that she'd never find a girlfriend and would have to stay alone forever and ever. As our daughter's well-being and social life are very close to our hearts, we promised her that we would take the «coolness» factor into account in our selection process.

And suddenly it's mid-August and the child doesn't have a school bag

A quick Google search for «school bag review» yielded over 250,000 results. So there should be no shortage of objective facts and unbiased information on the subject. Quite the opposite, in fact. You'd practically have to take your annual leave just to read through it all.
After we'd spent a whole weekend ploughing through the advice articles, I suggested to my girlfriend that we should have our daughter held back by about three or four years. We could then use that time to complete a degree in engineering, undertake further training in physiotherapy and attend a few seminars in the field of chemistry. That way, we could examine the design of school bags, assess their impact on a child's joints, and analyse any potentially harmful plasticisers and other ingredients. Building on that, we would then be able to select the best possible school bag for our firstborn. My girlfriend's look made it clear to me that such proposals, lacking in seriousness, were not helpful for decision-making.

So we decided to postpone the evaluation of the information and the decision for the time being. After all, there were still a few months to go before our daughter started school. Then Easter came, we renovated our flat, after which we decided to move house, looked for a new flat, found one, went on holiday and actually moved. And now it's suddenly mid-August and we still don't have a schoolbag.  

Has this schoolbag passed the elephant test?

As our little one is due to start school in 72 hours, buying a school bag has shot right to the top of our list of priorities. After all, we don't want our little girl standing in the hall at the school entrance ceremony with an Aldi carrier bag, whilst her new classmates proudly show off their new school bags.

Full of enthusiasm, we set off in the afternoon for a large department store to buy a school bag. My girlfriend instructs me beforehand to take the folder containing the 300 printed pages of test reports with me. After all, we want to be prepared for every eventuality.

Once we arrive at the department store, we realise that, with the school year about to begin, the selection of school bags – even with the best will in the world – cannot be described as overwhelmingly vast. Nor are the models still on the shelves exactly the most attractive ones.
One sales assistant is elated at the prospect of offloading some of his schoolbag clearance stock and offers his advice as pushy as a second-hand dealer. He immediately begins to shamelessly exaggerate the merits of his clearance items, which have certainly not been spurned without reason up to this point. 
Not on me, mate, I think, and consult my folder to compare his exaggerated marketing claims with the realities of my test reports. I bombard him with questions about ergonomics, DIN standards, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dibutyltin and many other substances that are difficult to pronounce. His evasive answers betray a shocking lack of competence and knowledge. He is also unable to provide a satisfactory answer to my question as to whether tests had been carried out with elephants trampling on the satchels to test their robustness.

After just under three hours, the sales assistant's left eye twitches nervously. In a tone that is now only moderately polite, he points out that the department store is closing in a few minutes. He then asks whether we have any intention of buying a schoolbag at all.

Pink fairies on an LSD trip

I'm just about to ask for a little more time to think it over when our daughter takes the decision out of our hands. She drags over a model of dubious beauty. It's covered in elves, fairies and unicorns, and is all in shades of pink and delicate pastels. It gives the slight impression that the mythical creatures depicted are on a collective, orgiastic LSD trip.

So I suggest to my daughter that she should have a look around a bit more. She stamps her foot angrily and declares furiously that she wants this exact schoolbag and no other, or she won't go to that stupid school at all. I start wondering which authority I might apply to for home schooling. But by then, my daughter is already carrying the «Fairyland on a Drug Trip» satchel to the till.

Naturally, despite its questionable aesthetics, the model falls into the higher price bracket. I make it clear to my girlfriend that I think it's inappropriate to spend half a month's rent on a satchel. She looks at me as if I'd just suggested sending our daughter to her first day of school wrapped in old potato sacks, and lectures me, saying that after all, our daughter is only starting school once in her life, so surely I could rein in my downright pathological and sometimes barely tolerable stinginess just this once. With that, she reaches for a pencil case, a pencil pouch and a sports bag, all in the matching fairy design.

And even three years before he starts school, his son thinks school is «rubbish».

I admit defeat and wonder how long one could survive on plain toast before the first signs of malnutrition, such as hair loss and gum disease, start to appear. Just then my son comes along and, his eyes sparkling, shows me a school bag covered in monsters, dragons and warriors. Euphorically, he declares that he wants it. I reply patiently, like a Zen monk who's drunk a bottle of valerian, that he won't be starting school for another three years and doesn't need a schoolbag yet.
My son looks at me blankly. To him, this isn't a reasonable excuse for not buying him the schoolbag, and he thinks I'm an unimaginative, narrow-minded small-minded person. My son says school is proper rubbish. No longer quite so relaxed, I explain to him that's not a nice word and I don't want him to say it. Angrily, my son retorts that school is just a pile of poo then. Then he throws himself on the floor, screaming. I'd love to do the same right now.
As we leave the department store, my daughter insists on carrying the schoolbag herself; after all, she's almost at school age. After 100 metres, she finds carrying it too tiring and, saying she's not a schoolchild yet, hands the bag to me. I try to make my way home as gracefully as possible. Well, as dignified as is possible for a bearded man in his thirties carrying a pink fairy schoolbag on his back in the Berlin Underground during rush hour.

This article was taken from Christian Hanne's blogFamilienbetrieb.
Photo: Scout