2001-08-21 - 2:11 a.m.

I see a lot of checks every day. That should be a rather obvious statement for those of you who pay attention at all, since my job is, essentially, reading and processing checks for a bank. Today, I saw many checks go through our sorters from the Mead Corporation. And these aren't just piddling little rebate checks either, these are Matured, Saving Up for the Kids' Education-type checks. I'm talking about $113,000 checks here. These are big checks being written by a company that makes almost all of its annual money within the next four weeks as school starts around the country. The frustrating thing is, while I'm working, I see many *very* high-priced checks that just fly by me, having nothing to do with me, though I still have to be the one to put the amount on it and send it on its way.

And now, I see Mead, of all companies, sending out multiple many-thousand-dollar checks out to people who are distinctly not me. And I don't see why. Why shouldn't I get a big-assed check from Mead? I had a Trapper Keeper as a kid! What else do you need to justify getting a hundred-thousand-dollar check from a company?

The way I see it, if there is anyone who deserves a ton of money from the makers of the Trapper Keeper, it's me. Because I am probably the only person in the world who actually had Bad Trapper Keeper Experiences. And I'm not talking like "blah blah everyone at school had one and I didn't," I'm talking like I would have been much better off if I'd never gotten one.

Anyone in my general age group can probably remember a time when Trapper Keepers were The Thing. They were what everyone wanted because you could… um… keep stuff… in 'em, and have them have cool stuff on the covers. And that's the problem. The stuff on the covers. The front of your Trapper Keeper is what made it cool. And that, my friends, is where it all started.

Many people say their parents have no idea what they like, and they're probably true. That or the parents just don't like what the kids like, and buy them completely different things to try to change that. My mother was not quite this way. My mother tried, very hard. And she *almost* got it. But, like one loud flat note in an entire orchestra of perfect pitches, she did the terrible thing of being *just* wrong enough to make her choices even worse than being absolutely wrong. Because when your mother buys you something, and *almost* gets it right, you can't just blow it off as her not trying because she doesn't get you, you realize she did really try, she did *really* want to do it right. So it's not her fault. So you deal with it. For her sake.

I did this a lot as a child. Probably the most memorable time this happened was with the Trapper Keeper (I think it would be best if, every time from this point on in the entry, to get the full effect, you imagined a long rumbling thunderclap every time you read the phrase "Trapper Keeper," because that's the feeling I want to portray with this phrase for me). When they were the Big Thing at school, I did a lot of work (read: whining) to get my mother to buy me one. And she didn't want to (money, just a fad, blah blah), but I kept asking. I know now that I just wanted it because it was a fad, but then, I had no idea, and frankly I didn't care.

So finally, without warning, one day she bought it for me. I don't remember the day very well at all, but I remember the Trapper Keeper (extra long thunderclap here). I remember the first moment my mother gave it to me. It was supposed to be a really big surprise, and, well, it was. Because it wasn't just any Trapper Keeper… it was a pink one. Light pink. With pandas on the front. A fairly realistic painting of some pandas, under a full moon, eatin' some bamboo, with some fuzzy "lighting." And the rest of it was pink and an odd almost-navy blue.

Pink.

With pandas.

I smiled when I got it, because she had been nice enough to finally buy it for me, but I couldn't understand *why* she would buy me a pink Trapper Keeper with pandas. The explanation was that at the time I was really into the environment, including things like endangered species. Pandas were an endangered species, so she thought I would like it because it fit my interest in the environment.

It's amazing, I think, how well a child can hold a smile to appease the parent when they know they're going to get their ass kicked at school the next day because of them. And I couldn't just *not* bring it. It had taken a lot of work to get her to get it for me, and she thought it was really nice. She thought she had picked something I would really like. And the problem is, she had the right thought behind it. She just had no idea what an elementary school guy can bring to school and still maintain a decent level of dignity and not-beaten-up-ness.

And so I brought my pink with pandas Trapper Keeper to school in my fluorescent green, one-strap backpack which—for some reason—I wasn't embarrassed about, (I can only attribute that to the fact that it was the 80's) and using it purely to take up space so my mother wouldn't notice I didn't want it with me at school, and would put papers in it that didn't matter any more when I got home from school so she would think I was still using it. It was my dirty secret that I kept from my mother for years, and don't think I ever told her. It was for her own sake, though.

And for that, I think I deserve one of those big checks. Just one.

And not one of those Big Checks like on game shows and golf tournaments, a real one.

I wouldn't be able to fit one of the Big Checks in my Trapper Keeper. And then I'd finally have to tell my mom the truth.

And no one wants that.