Let me say something that apparently needs saying. If a book bag does not have a zipper, a snap, or at the very least a scrap of Velcro, it is not a bag. It is material that wants to be a bag.
Carrying a “bag” without any closure is just daring gravity to ruin your day. (Ask me how I know.)
You sling it over your shoulder, lean down to pick something up, and suddenly half your life performs a swan dive onto the sidewalk. Journal. Pen. Lip balm. Receipts from 2022. All of it.
God forbid if you put it on the floor of a moving vehicle and the brakes are applied quickly. You may well find you’re missing your wallet when you’re trying to buy tea at the local cafe.
Word Raccoon has tested this. Extensively. She does not approve of these “fashion” items.
And another thing. An almost BIGGER pet peeve, one that WR and I share:
Why on earth do they make so many of these bags in cream?
Cream.
White.
Beige so pale it looks like it’s having an identity crisis, not knowing whether it’s cream or white.
Ugly much?
And that color is inevitably printed with a tourist spot/small business’s logo. If you’re looking for a souvenir or a way to support your favorite that isn’t a t-shirt, options are limited.
I beg you, though, please don’t bring more of these into the world, tourist spots and businesses. I feel like these bags need enforced population control.
Let’s not even mention how inconveniently sized they are. When you try to use them, they’re never big enough. Gym bag? Not gonna hold your shoes. Farmers Market bag? No structure. Your tomatoes are gonna squish your herbs if you’re not careful.
They’re book bags, you’ll say. Can’t you just use them to hold books? Okay, that they are halfway decent for. But if you’re like me, you never know where they are when you need them anyway. And yet they’re everywhere, too.
A book bag is not a decorative pillow. It is supposed to be a working animal. It’s supposed to live on café floors and ride in car seats. It should sit without betraying the user beside park benches and occasionally under them.
It suffers tea drips, pen leaks, and whatever mysterious substance lives in the bottom of your purse which is usually half melted Atkins bar, half lipstick.
These bags are expected to survive a life.
People will say “Well, you can wash it,” like that solves everything.
Yes, technically you can wash it.
But have you ever tried? Once you wash one it emerges from the machine like Word Raccoon after a rough night: structure gone, starch has left the building. The bag is now limp and a little philosophical.
You can still use it, but it will never again stand up for itself. Which is more than a little sad, because then you definitely don’t want it in rotation, because now it’s uglier than ever.
But the true “champions” of this genre are the conference bags. People, people. Let’s not.
You paid far too much to attend the conference, and in return they hand you a bag that cost roughly seventy-five cents to produce with the air of handing you a designer purse. It has no closure, no structure, and is made of a fabric that feels like it was once briefly related to canvas but has since given up trying.
Printed across the front is something like:
Midwestern Regional Something-or-Other Symposium.
The conference tote is basically the literary world’s textile equivalent of the free pen in hotel rooms that doesn’t write.
It looks useful. It resembles a real object. But when the moment arrives to actually rely on it, it fails you, leaves you scratching frantically at the pad of paper on the nightstand.
As with most items acquired without much personal selection, most of these bags accumulate. But do they stay in rotation? Absolutely not.
They huddle in the backs of closets and drawers in little piles like weary conference attendees who stayed too long at the networking reception, a little tipsy but not enough to be scandalous.
Each bearing the name of an event no one remembers and a slogan no one understood even at the time with an acronym everyone ended up saying differently. Or, as above, an unfortunate acronym.
Eventually, you donate them to the thrift shop. But even then you suspect the thrift shop doesn’t really want them either, unless they’re stuffed with other items.
Word Raccoon has reached a firm conclusion, and I support her:
A proper book bag must close. Zipper preferred. Snap acceptable. Velcro tolerated. Otherwise you are simply carrying your belongings around in a cloth bowl and hoping for the best.
Word Raccoon refuses to trust gravity this much.
And hope, as we all know, is not a fastening system.
Ban flimsy book bags. Not books.
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