the rolling backpack

Many people warned me that law school is like high school. Aside from the fact that you are dealing once again with lockers there are cliques, study group frenemies, girls wearing the same shit I wore in the nineties (flared jeans, polos, and flip flops – the uniform of my Florida HS) and rolling backpacks.

It seems odd that in an institution where the student handbook is one of the longest I’ve ever seen and covers all possible imagined liability (I’m fairly certain there is a section on there of what to do if attacked by zombies) the rolling backpack is still allowed to roam free in law school. Although I can obviously walk up the three flights of stairs to my classroom I instead make the conscious choice to take the elevator each day (its my constitutional right as an American to be lazy, dammit!). Almost each time the elevator is filled with the dreaded rolling backpack, taking up valuable floor space, and forcing me to skip the elevator and instead engage in physical activity. Super lame.  

I totally get WHY my fellow students bring the rolling backpack. Law books are heavy and its extremely difficult to strong-arm your way onto the T, instilling fear in the BU biddies and establishing yourself higher in the hierarchal chain of I’mbetterthanyou when you are doubled over with textbooks and dropping your papers everywhere (it’s all about being able to make eye contact people, and you can’t do that when you are picking up stuff from the floor). However, even though my personal hygiene might slip as the dreaded three hour exams approach, my cock-blocking glasses might appear as the valuable minutes of shoving my contacts onto my retina give way to an extra minute of sleep, and the leggings-as-pants trend will appear on my person… never shall I give in to the temptation of bringing a rolling backpack.

There is a dark personal context to my decision not to own a rolling backpack. A context that extends back to my own childhood and my mother’s fateful decision that had me clenching the handle of a bright pink rolling backpack in middle school. I should have fought back against the system, protested against the totalitarian regime I was subjected to, brought up as evidence the fact that parents thought that having my brothers’ and I on rainbow leashes when we visited Disney World  was a good thing (true fact, there are multiple pictures to prove it…. Also they were less of leashes then full body harnesses with leashes attached). Yet I was quiet. I accepted the pink rolling backpack. I thought it was logical and (dare I say) cute (cause it was pink!).

 There may have been one scene on the school bus, my favorite orange skort and matching orange top clammy with sweat, some clique of preteen girls headed by a mini bitchy Regina George calling me out on my supreme un-coolness, which all led to me forever parting ways with that little pink rolling backpack - but I won’t go into specifics. The memory is hazy and the pain still too raw. But the fact remains, I refuse to use a rolling backpack in law school and I judge others who do so.

~Frenchie