Office Max rehab

I was trying to hustle the kids out the door before we were late for school.

“Grab my backpack, Mom,” Sassy called from the kitchen where she was filling her water bottle. One of these mornings I’m going to lose my mind over that damn water bottle. She always waits to refill her bottle as we are actively walking out the door.

I reached down and hooked my hand under one of the straps and yanked it up to my shoulder. Well, that’s what I meant to do only when I yanked my arm came out of my socket.

“My God! What do you have in here? A kindergartner?” I asked her. Her backpack had been looking a bit bulky lately but I had no idea the extent of it.

“It’s just my stuff.” Sassy sauntered out of the kitchen screwing the lid on her thermos.

“Sassy, you’re going to hurt yourself carrying around all this stuff.” I unzipped the first outside pocket. I pulled out three granola bars, about 15 hair ties which is odd since she’s always got her hair hanging in her face, 27 flavored chapsticks, a handful of markers, her Fancy Nancy diary, and some random change.

“I need all that stuff,” she insisted.

Zippered pocket number two held three 24 packs of unsharpened #2 pencils, 2 boxes of Crayola markers, 3 large pink erasers, a box of colored pencils, 3 full boxes of Crayola Crayons, and a whole bunch of wadded up paper consisting of memos from her teacher and some graded work.

“Don’t take everything out,” she insisted.

I ignored her and opened the final pocket. Holy mother of Zeus. There were six spiral notebooks, one three ring binder completely full of loose leaf paper, a hard-cover copy of a Wimpy Kid book, a Junie B. Jones book, the charger to her Nintendo DS, and 47 empty candy wrappers.

Seriously, this backpack had to weigh at least 25 lbs. I started unpacking all this nonsense.

“Don’t, Mom. I need that stuff!”

“For what? Are you selling school supplies on the black market?”

“Huh?” She let me know she didn’t know what I was talking about.

“What’s the street price for a box of Crayolas?” I asked her.

“Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about as usual.” She rolled her eyes and cocked her hip to the side.

“This is a slippery slope, my love. You start out with colored pencils and before you know it, you’ll be carting around copier toner.” I piled all the unnecessary office supplies on the kitchen table. “I love you, honey, so I’m going to help you here.”

She blinked at me, annoyed, and sighed deeply. “I need my stuff, Mom.”

“This is for your own good,” I told her and handed her a back pack holding 1 folder, 1 novel (I can’t go to the other room without a book in my hands, I can’t expect her to), several pencils and her lunch box.

“At least let me have some paper,” she begged and reached for the stockpile.

“Nope.” I shoved her out the front door. “You’re going cold turkey, baby.”

“Moooo-oooooom.”

“You’ll thank me later.”