There are two things I absolutely hate: being late, and being unprepared. I will never know when I’ll need to tape up a falling apart notebook, or staple seventeen papers together, so I’d rather be prepared and have my backpack overflowing, than be unprepared when a matter of life or death comes along.
My backpack always looks like an over-stuffed elephant. It could be because I always have at least three books in it, or because all of the stuff I have in the middle pocket. Bandaids, three-hole punch/ruler, full-sized stapler, stapler-remover, extra staples, two different sizes of paper clips, binder clips, tape, scissors, crayons, colored pencils, tissues, and index cards; just to name a few.
My friends like to laugh and say I’m obsessive, but the laughing stops when they don’t have to stand in line all day to use the teacher’s stapler, or interrupt class to three hole punch a paper to put in their binder. My teachers laugh when I pull out everything in my backpack to find one little thing I need, my friends laugh when I drop everything trying to pull things out of my backpack, but in the end: I’m the one who’s always prepared no matter what happens throughout the day.
There are about seven million things that can happen where I will need something from the second pocket of my backpack(which is basically my junk drawer). If my pencil case gets a giant hole in the side, I can staple it back up. If my teacher stapled a packet so wonky to the point where the holes don’t even come close to lining up, I can take the original staple out with my trusty staple remover, and put in a new one in the right place. If I need to color cells in biology and my teacher only has yellow and brown color pencils, I can just pull out my bag with my Crayola twistable crayons and be all set. If a teacher does not hole punch a packet, I can just pull out my travel sized three hole punch.
If I run out of tape or binder clips, I feel an overwhelming sense of dread. I’ll get a pain in my chest so severe, which will only be soothed once I restock my supply. If my three hole punch bends accidentally, tears will be shed.
Above all of the school supplies, is my personal stash of bandaids. I need to have at least ten in my backpack at all times, with Neosporin for the very bad cuts. This may sound crazy but I am the clumsiest person on the planet. Every morning I notice at least three more bruises that I’ve never seen before. Thirty percent of the time I reach into my backpack, I will come back out bleeding. Although painful at times, this is the price of always being prepared.
Although carrying all of these supplies around may get tiring, and I may never have enough room in my backpack, but to me all of the things I carry with me are necessities.
