Kelly Poe Wilson

I live in the Land of the Lost. No, I don’t share a cave with Marshall, Will and Holly, nor do I play slow-motion games of “chase” with the neighborhood Sleestaks, but nevertheless, I live in the Land of the Lost–lost shoes, lost homework, lost lunch boxes, etc. As befits a citizen of the Land of the Lost, most of my time is spent practicing the (also) lost art of “looking.” (“Lost” at least, it would seem, to my fellow citizens.) Sometimes entire days will go by when I do nothing but search for one “vital” lost item after another, until the various nooks and crannies of my house are as drearily familiar to me as the frozen food section at Bashas’. (Here’s a question: if you have something that you consider “vital” to your health and happiness–such as a completed homework assignment–wouldn’t you make sure not to leave it in the backyard during the monsoon season? Or, if you had a favorite stuffed animal–one that had to be in place for sleep to occur–wouldn’t you leave it on your bed where you could find it? It seems to me that to do anything else would be ridiculous–as ridiculous as say, leaving 30,000 guns lying around a country filled with hostile insurgents. Although, on second thought, perhaps that’s not the best example.)

Sometimes it gets so bad that I think that maybe I’m being punished for being forgetful in a former life, and, in a way, I suppose I am: after all, aren’t all parents being punished for the crimes they committed during their former lives as children? At least when I was a child, though, the things that I was looking for were the things that I, myself, had lost; with this current losing streak we’re living through the things I’m looking for are things in which I played no part in misplacing. And what’s worse: when it comes to the current crop of lost items, not only am I a member of the search party; all too often I am the search party.

Forget having my six-year-old son, Clyde, help look: he’s about as helpful as Spicoli (“I have a jacket? No way–what does it look like?”). And as for Clementine–well, since lately everything in her life seems to play out like the last scene in a Greek tragedy, most of her “looking” consists of long, bitter lamentations at the very idea of the object going missing in the first place ( “Oh heartless Universe: why have you once more riven my jacket from me?” Sort of a “Rage, rage against the dying of the light (blue jacket)” moment for the pre-pubescent set.) An alternate tack for her is to blame the loss on her little brother. Unfortunately, the same trait that renders him unsuitable for looking duties also makes him unfit as a scapegoat: “What? You used to have a jacket, too? Awesome!” (see Spicoli, ibid.)

One might think that, saddled as I am with two such unhelpful lookers, I could at least count on the services of the one other adult in my house–my husband–for help. One might think that, but then, one would be wrong, because if children are like Spicoli reborn, then husbands are like Spicoli grown up. How else would you explain that mine’s usual response to any and all appeals to help form a search party for missing library books, glasses, iPods, etc. is an infuriating: “Relax. It’ll turn up eventually.” (Yes, but I don’t need it eventually: I need it today).

Come to think of it, looking back on those old Land of the Lost episodes it now becomes painfully obvious why it was that they could never escape: it wasn’t because the portal back into their own world was too hard to find; it was because they didn’t have a mother there to look for it.

Although, technically he is still (and always will be) my baby, my son Clyde is now six and a half years old, which makes me worry that soon the day will come when he finds out the truth about Santa Claus. (He already knows about the Easter Bunny, although I think I might have explained it to him in such a way that he now believes that after three days the Easter Bunny comes out of his cave, and if he sees his shadow he then goes back inside and eats ham for another six weeks–or something like that. Obviously, Easter brunch mimosas and explaining early man’s attempt to explain the return of Spring don’t mix.) When it comes to Santa, however, I think that we’re still cool: Clyde is still one of the faithful.

This was not something we ever had to worry about with his sister, Clementine–long before we ever considered it, she was gently informing us that “Santa Claus is just a story people tell because it makes them happy.” She also told us, years before she ever lost her first tooth, that, even though she knew the tooth fairy wasn’t real, when the time did come she would still be expecting the usual dollar (she did allow that placing it under the pillow, however, was optional). But then again, Clementine–just like George Bailey–was “born older.” Not so with Clyde.

Whereas Clementine’s loss of faith came too early for my tastes (I still miss those days when I could get compliance by pretending to call Santa and telling him, “Better not come this year, old pal: looks like somebody just can’t be good”); with Clyde, on the other hand, I sometimes get the feeling that he will be the only kid in junior high who not only still believes in the jolly old elf, but drops a letter addressed to the North Pole into the mailbox every December as well.

The hard truth is that while Clementine is the soul of cynicism, Clyde is the very essence of belief–a condition that has led to some very tricky times in our household, since, as everyone knows, there is nothing a cynic enjoys quite so much as debunking the cherished tenets of the true believer.

And the fact is that it would be far too easy for her to do this, because, for all of his powers of true belief, the one thing Clyde believes in the most is that his older sister knows absolutely everything. And so, as Clyde’s list of Santa Claus questions gets more and more specific (“How will he get into our house if we don’t have a chimney?” “How can there be two Santas in the same parade?” “Why didn’t he bring me wings like I asked for last year?”), I can almost feel the moment approaching when Clementine will gleefully disabuse him of his last shred of faith. For me, on the outside looking in, it is like Clementine is a sharp little pin, and Clyde’s belief is this large, tempting balloon. And it is only my threats of dire retribution that are keeping the two apart.

Not that I’ll have to keep them apart for much longer: even though so far Clyde has been so content with my vague answers to his Santa Claus questions that sometimes I’m afraid he’ll grow up to be a U.N. monitor in Burma or something (“Where did all these toys come from?” “Um, some people believe that Santa’s elves make them in his workshop?”), I know the day is soon coming when he’ll demand some firmer answers. I just hope that when that day does come I will have not yet had my third spiked eggnog. Otherwise he might end up thinking that Santa Claus was born in a manger–and that his first visitors were a couple of Druids.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a case of a child actually dying from being forced to take music lessons. (Of course, now that I am committing this to paper I can nearly guarantee that I will soon start receiving a slew of letters all complaining about my lack of sensitivity to the musically injured, starting with the woman whose buck-toothed daughter accidentally inhaled her piccolo and finishing with the guy whose brother drowned when he neglected to clean out the spit valve on his tuba.) Ok then, let me rephrase: freak accidents aside, no child has ever been seriously harmed by practicing a musical instrument. (Ah, but what about the zither, you say? I hear that if you practice a zither with the wrong posture you can end up crippled for life.) Enough already–I’m sticking with my original argument: it ain’t gonna kill you to practice your violin for fifteen minutes a day. Or at least that’s what I tell my children.

Between Clementine and Clyde, our family has been taking violin lessons at NAU for the past seven years, which, although it may only be equivalent to 49 years in a dog’s life, is the same as 523 years in the life of a Suzuki mother. This means that according to all methods of calculation I should now be dead 10 times over, or at the very least be leading a shadow existence as a head in a jar somewhere. Somehow, though, life goes on.

It hasn’t always been easy (actually, it hasn’t ever been easy). Fortunately, however, with Clementine I got to experience the very worst of it at the very first of it: how well I remember the sight of a cute little four-year-old Clementine lying on the floor with her tiny little violin, pathetically clutching her head and moaning, “I wish I was dead! At least then I wouldn’t have to play the violin anymore.” Compared to that, Clyde’s feeble little protests (“I don’t remember signing up for this”) are almost charming.

And it hasn’t always been rewarding, either. Although, ever since we allowed her to give up on the classical pieces entirely and concentrate on fiddle tunes Clementine has begun to make excellent progress, back when she was still in the structured world of Suzuki we despaired of her ever advancing at all. In fact, I was convinced that she was destined to become the oldest living Book 1 student of all time. (As her fellow classmates grew up and moved on to Books 2, 3, 4 and even 5, and as their places were filled by a series of comparatively younger replacements, I felt as if I was seeing a real life version of Dazed and Confused, with Clementine in the Matthew McConnaughey role–“That’s what I love about these Book One kids, man. I get older and they stay the same age.”)

Many people (my husband first and foremost among them) have asked me why, since we obviously have no shortage of other stressors to fill our life, I insist on adding music lessons into the mix. To them I always reply that there was once a time (not that very long ago, actually), when people didn’t consider a person to be truly educated unless they had learned at least the basics of music–something that I still believe to be true.

And then, of course, there is something to be said for bowing to the inevitable: after all, what are the chances of a 4-year-old who melodramatically wishes for death developing into anything other than a 14-year-old who broods over the pointlessness of life as we know it? At least this way when the time comes (and it will) for Clementine to write morose little emo songs about broken hearts and dying, she’ll know exactly which key to write them in.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a beggar.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with homeless people, panhandlers, or even (for the most part) trustafarians spare-changing their way across the country to the next Rainbow Gathering. I have no problem with people asking me for something, even when it’s something I don’t particularly want to give. I don’t even mind it when they are a little pushy: there used to be an older women who hung around downtown Flagstaff who was not just pushy; she was downright demanding. Her schtick was to march up to you on the sidewalk, and–glaring as if you, personally, were the one to blame for all her troubles–thrust her open palm up under your face in a silent “request” for spare change. Once you had placed the coins in her hand (you almost always did), she would check them, and if you hadn’t put in enough she would repeat the whole process over and over again until you had met her quota. And like I said, I was fine with that: at least she hit you up silently, which, compared to some of the improbable hard-luck stories the other downtown regulars felt compelled to share, was a blessedly peaceful approach.

The other nice thing about her approach was that, despite all of her demanding ways, she still knew how to take “no” for an answer: on those few occasions when I didn’t give her anything–because I didn’t have anything to give–she didn’t push it. As demanding as she was, when it came right down to it she always seemed to recognize a sincere “no.”

It’s been years now since I last saw her, and–given her advanced age then–I doubt that I ever will again. This is too bad, because recently I have come to the conclusion that I would gladly give her all of my pocket change from now until the end of time if only she would teach my children silent begging and the art of accepting “no.”

Come to think of it, I might even toss in a few bills: it would still be a small price to pay to never again have to hear the word pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese.

I’m not sure when it happened, but somehow pleeese has become the go-to word in my house for begging. With no encouragement (I swear) on my part, pleeese has taken on the mythic stature of the Masonic handshake; for some reason my children seem to believe that it is the key that will open every door (including the door to puppy ownership, apparently). This, even though–judging from the amount of verbal jiggling its users employ (“Pleese? Puh-leeze? Plees-plees-plees-plees-pleeese?”)–it would seem to be an ill-fitting key at best.

Perhaps it is because of its reputation as one of “the magic words;” however, what its users don’t seem to realize is that the word that holds the magic is please; pleeese on the other hand doesn’t even qualify as a real word–it’s more of a menacing noise, sort of like the whine of an engine in the wrong gear. It is also one of those sounds that gets its power to annoy from its unpredictability: rising and falling like the barking of a million excited Chihuahuas, it is designed to go directly to the lizard portion of our brain and elicits a response of: “Give them what they want; give them anything, just make that noise stop.”

Except that it doesn’t work. Or, at least it doesn’t work 99.9% of the time. (I swear.) Maybe its like my husband once said when I asked him why it was that some guys would hit on every single woman in the bar: “Because it only takes one yes.” I’m guessing, though, that the “one yes” didn’t come about in response to pleeese.

This story has it’s beginnings way back in 2003, when my then six-year-old daughter, Clementine, lost her pet Beta fish, Purpley. (In case you were wondering, by “lost” I mean that Purpley died. I know that most of the time this would be obvious, but in cases involving Clementine–the girl famous the world over for her ability to leave the house wearing two shoes and come back wearing only one–a certain amount of clarification does seem to be the order of the day.)

Now, when it comes to dead pet disposal, I am a fan of the “porcelain burial at sea” method: it’s quick, it’s clean, and, for a fish, it’s appropriate. Clementine, however, is–for such matters at least–a strict traditionalist: for her it was a shoe box (or, in Purpley’s case, a matchbox) or nothing. And therein lay the problem.

You see, while all deaths are untimely, Purpley’s death had come at an especially inopportune time for us: we were right in the middle of trying to sell our house. And while I wasn’t too worried about what potential buyers might think if they came upon a fish graveyard before the sale (if they found the remains we could always just tell them that Purpley’s corpse was a really bad likeness of St. Joseph), I was a little bit worried about what might happen afterwards. After all, it was hard to imagine a funeral conservative such as Clementine willingly foregoing all of the usual rituals that accompany grief: the erecting of memorials, the annual visits to the graveyard–maybe even the sharing of “a wee dram” with some friends as they toasted the memory of “good ol’ Purpley.” And, while having a dead fish in your back yard might still be considered on the edge of acceptable, having a morbid little girl hanging out would not be.

Given these circumstances, I decided to go the Ted Williams route: I stuck the late Purpley in a baggie in the freezer and moved him with us into our new home. It wasn’t meant to be a permanent arrangement–I had every intention of giving him a proper burial–right up until the very moment when I forgot all about him.

Flash forward to 2007: I’m finally throwing out the dozen or so black frozen bananas lining the bottom of my freezer that we also moved with (twice, according to my husband, who– when I point out that, no, actually that was two different sets of five-year-old frozen bananas– gives me a look that makes the one he gave to the black bananas practically affectionate by comparison), when I come across a baggie holding what appears to be a small blue paint chip and suddenly realize that I have just discovered the lost tomb of Purpley. Now what?

Do I show it to Clementine so that we can hold the long-delayed funeral services, knowing that if I do I will likely be opening the door to a whole new round of grieving–not to mention the accusations of neglect. (“He was in there for four years? You said we would bury him right away–I’ve eaten fish sticks out of that freezer!”)

Or do I give him a secret burial, praying that she won’t remember his neglected burial years later in the middle of a therapy session and wind up accusing me of leaving Purpley behind. (“But I kept him for four years!” “Oh yeah? Prove it.”)

In the end, I decided that indecision was my best decision; I stuck Purpley back in the freezer from whence he came. And just to make sure that no one else will ever find him, I put some overripe bananas on top of his hiding spot. I don’t have the time right now, but someday those bananas are going to make some awesome banana bread.

In physics, there is a field of study called particle physics that is concerned with breaking matter down into its smallest parts. One of the ways in which they do this is through a particle accelerator, a device which speeds subatomic particles up so fast that when they collide they (hopefully) break apart into even smaller components. Unfortunately for most particle physicists, though, particle accelerators tend to cost a whole lot of money–money that the government would much rather spend on vital programs like the creation of federally funded foot-tapping-free zones. Fortunately for those same poverty-stricken scientists, however, there is a solution to this problem, one that will keep both the scientists and the anti-toe-tapping lobby equally happy: simply give my daughter, Clementine, a nice new pair of scissors.

That’s right: an ordinary pair of scissors: once Clementine has a pair of these in her hands, she is unstoppable. Really, you can’t imagine the havoc she is capable of creating with this one simple tool: forget all of your personal horror stories about your own child’s DIY haircuts and neighborhood dog make overs–if Clementine were to be given enough time with a pair of scissors, the world would ultimately be reduced to atoms–one snip at a time.

In this I believe that she is unique: although a lot of what I write about in this column is universal, I have yet to meet another parent whose ten year-old daughter is a burgeoning particle physicist (and an old school one, at that). I have also yet to meet another parent who daily has to wade through a veritable snowdrift of dismembered t-shirts, Swiss-cheesed pajama bottoms and unraveled scarves, or one who, like I, feels like they are constantly living in a sequel to Edward Scissorhands. (Not that there aren’t plenty of mothers who wouldn’t gladly invite Johnny Depp into their houses to film said sequel–myself included). And while of course I have met other parents that worry that their child will someday end up working in a windowless cubicle, I have yet to meet the one who worries–as I do–that it will be because their daughter has been given employment in that office as a human paper shredder.

The logical solution, of course, would be to remove all of the scissors from our house; however, besides the fact that I don’t particularly wish to live in a house where I have to gnaw my way into every package of tortillas, the fact is that Clementine does not really even need a pair of scissors to perform her experiments: in a pinch, some strong fingernails and a sharp set of teeth have always served her just as well.

I suppose this could mean that Clementine is on the verge of becoming one of those scissor artists–the kind that cut beautifully intricate pictures out of a single sheet of paper, but–judging from her current body of work–it would seem that if her scissoring lies in an artistic direction, it is in a more Abstract one (“The 4 million pieces of paper you see lying on the ground in front of you represent Man’s Inhumanity to Man–or Man’s Inability to Get the Trash to the Curb for the Third Week in a Row–take your pick.”)

True, there is always the possibility of a career as a real particle physicist someday–who knows, one day she may make the discovery that will change the world as we know it.

Then again, she could just as easily end up as an extra on the set of the above-mentioned Edward Scissorhands sequel. Let’s see: ground-breaking scientist or the chance to be in the same room with Johnny Depp? I guess only time will tell if she makes the right choice. (And if, when she does, she takes me along with her to the set.)

Children these days know a lot of scary words–and I’m not talking about the ones they supposedly learned from watching cable TV or listening to Marilyn Manson. (Nice try, but trust me: no one believes they learned it anywhere but from you.) No, the scary words I am thinking about are the ones like oops (uttered just after you have forbidden the use of your Grandmother’s bone china tea set for a Teddy Bear picnic), I think I was supposed to give this to you last week (spoken in a rush all as one word while holding a crumpled memo detailing some vitally important meeting or event that occurred the night before), and maybe (as in “Did you remember to put your rat back in his cage like I asked you to?” “Um, maybe.”). But, when it comes right down to it, there is only one word that is absolutely guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of every parent, every time, and that word is nuthin–especially when it is uttered in response to that most common of parental questions: “What’s going on in there?”

For example: say your child runs into the kitchen and hurriedly grabs the broom and dustpan (items that have heretofore been regarded by this child as some sort of quaint decoration, like the flat irons and washboards that adorn the walls of Cracker Barrel-type establishments). Shocked at their sudden (and desperate) interest in the domestic arts, you ask them “What’s going on?” only to hear a breezy (or is it breathless?) nuthin. The same is also true when your child suddenly “needs” a six foot strip of paper towels (“What for?” “Nuthin”), or demands that all of the doors and windows be shut at once (Why?” “So, you know, nuthin like, gets out.”). (Conversely, a sudden request that all the doors and windows be opened so that “Nuthin, you know, like, stays in” can be equally distressing.)

Now, it may be that I am not remembering my own childhood correctly (something my mother insists on pointing out to me after nearly every column), but it seems to me that nuthin is very much a product of this generation: my generation’s go-to words were I dunno and not me (immortalized by Bil Keane as the hard-working little poltergeists who wreak household havoc). And, again, maybe my memory is faulty, but it also seems to me that nuthin is a much more sinister fellow than either not me or I dunno, because, on some level, nuthin is a complete denial of reality. Think about it: how can there be nothing going on? After all, even when the day comes that the Universe is tottering along on its last legs, it will still be actively decaying. Ok, maybe that’s a little extreme, but you get my point: there is always something going on.

And, at least with I dunno and not me, there is the admission of such: lamps are being broken, muddy footprints are being made–we just don’t know by whom. With nuthin however, not only is there a complete denial of anything untoward going on, there is, in the sullenly defensive tone in which it is issued, a sneering disbelief that anything is being accused in the first place. Nuthin is always spoken in the righteously indignant tone of one who must put up, yet again, with being falsely accused. (Much like the way the poor guy who shows up at the airport wearing his favorite ticking backpack must once again put up with being strip-searched.)

Still, I suppose that I dunno, not me, and even nuthin aren’t really the scariest words that children know. After all, they could just answer the question “what’s going on in there?” with the truth–and that’s a prospect that I find to be truly terrifying.

Whenever people talk about the benefits of traveling, they always seem to note how “broadening” it is; how it opens your eyes to all of the world’s diversity and differences. And though that is true, what I enjoy most about traveling is not so much seeing the world’s differences, but rather its “samenesses”. There is nothing quite like being halfway around the world and seeing someone having the exact same problems I have (albeit in a different language) for making me feel–for one brief, shining moment–that, just maybe, I am not completely crazy.

This is especially true when it comes to parenting: so much of parenting happens behind closed doors that it soon becomes easy to believe that your children alone are the only ones who are ill-mannered, whiny, spoiled rotten, and, in general, insufferable, and that all other families are models of smooth running perfection.

Witness a family on vacation, however–when the thin veneer of civilization is stripped from even the most Stepford of families–and you will see that they are all neurotic, dysfunctional and socially backwards–in other words, just like yours. Travel far enough, and you’ll even see that this is true for the very same families to which we are so often held up to, and found lacking: the European family.

Call me jingoistic, but after years of being made to feel inferior about nearly every aspect of American parenting–the schools our kids attend, the food they eat, the TV shows they watch–there is just something immensely gratifying about the sight of a sullen, iPod-clutching teenager getting chewed out for her rotten attitude in Italian.

Our last trip was perfect for voyeurism of this sort, since we were traveling in open-topped Land Rovers that functioned as little mobile living rooms on wheels. Even though we were not actually a part of those other families, when our small herds of Land Rovers jockeyed with each other for better and better viewing positions on the Serengeti we could not help but eavesdrop on their domestic squabbles, so that before long we were privy to not only the above-mentioned Italian scolding, but also cases of English whining, French shushing, and, I’m not sure, but I think Japanese “I’m going to count to ten”-ing as well.

And then, of course, there were the elephants. One day, while waiting for a family of elephants to cross the road in front of us I witnessed a parenting scene so eerily familiar I almost thought I was experiencing deja vu. During the crossing–perhaps due to some earlier, unwitnessed tiff, but more likely just due to general orneriness–a young (approximately 8 years old, according to our guide) elephant decided that a dangerous road crossing was the perfect time to give another, even younger (3 to 4 years old) elephant a swift slap with his trunk. This played out just like it would in a human family, with the baby elephant yelping and caterwauling like it was being stuck all over with knives, and the older one affecting the elephant version of the “What did I do?” face.

That’s when the older female who had just crossed the road in front of them executed a quick about face, charged back into the road and issued a very loud, and very exasperated warning trumpet as she hustled the wayward children off the road. And though I no more claim to speak elephant than I do Japanese, I’m fairly certain that her aggrieved roar translated into something like: “I have had it with you kids. So help me, I will pull this migration over right now–do you hear me?”

That, together with the Babel of scoldings I had been hearing throughout the day, was almost enough to convince me that we really are all the same–in fact, with some elephant-sized iPods I’m sure all of our children could learn to sulk as one.

A few weeks ago, there was a newspaper column encouraging people to love their animal neighbors–even the stinky and destructive ones (i.e., skunks and raccoons)–because, “after all, they were here first.” I don’t know where that writer lives, but as for myself I live in a house that is one-hundred-plus years old; the only way our resident skunks and raccoons could have been here first is if they are the animal versions of Jack LaLanne.

Still, I understood her point (“Why can’t we all just get along?”), and can even recall a time in my life when I, too, would have proposed interspecies tolerance for all. That, however, was before the incident that has come to be known as “The Stinking.”

That’s right: Dude–we got skunk’d.

By “we” I mean my entire house–all one-hundred-plus years of it. Every nook, every cranny, and every single item inside of it–including every man, woman and child. (Especially child, but more of that later). And what did we do to deserve this? Not a thing. In fact, in all likelihood the vengeful sprayer was probably fighting with one of his/her own companions in the crawl space under our house. (This begs the question: if even the skunks can’t stand being around each other, how am I supposed to?) And so: one minute I was lying in my bed asleep, and the next thing I knew I was trying to wake myself up enough to not throw up.

I tried to go back to sleep, but no matter how much I willed my sleeping self to breathe through my mouth I still ended up taking in a nice big snootful every time I fell back asleep–which meant that I still ended up waking up with the urge to hurl. (And for all of you people out there who are saying, “Hey, I kind of like the smell of skunk,” know this: what might be considered a “smell” as you drive past it on the open highway becomes an absolute physical “presence” when trapped in the confines of a small house). Trying to cover up the stench didn’t work, either: neither air freshener nor incense were strong enough to stand up to the “eau de p.u.,” and even applying various “anti-funk” products directly to my nostrils didn’t help (by the time the night was over I had shoved more stuff up my nose than Kate Moss at an after-hours Oscar party). In the end I decided that, as with all wounds (even the olfactory ones), the only thing that was really going to work was time.

Or so I thought.

Five hours later I sent what I considered to be a relatively stink-free Clementine and Clyde off to school. It was approximately fifteen minutes after that that I received a call telling me to come pick up Clyde because he, “smelled too bad to stay at school.” (Clementine, being older and sneakier, obviously used her talent for faking wide-eyed innocence to throw the school bloodhounds “off the scent,” as it were.)

Now, for many children, being sent home because they smelled bad would be a one way ticket to a lifetime of therapy; Clyde, on the other hand–the boy who bops through life as if he has a continuos loop of “Don’t Worry; Be Happy,” running through his head–was fine. I, however–faced with the prospect of foregoing a much-needed nap in favor of spending the day with a five-year-old who was quite excited to have gotten out of school early–was less so. Which helped strengthen my resolve to immediately deal with the skunk situation–permanently. Don’t worry, I didn’t do anything drastic: I just got a trap that catches them alive so that they can be “relocated” humanely. Now all I need is the address of a certain “love thy neighbor” animal columnist, and I’ll be all set.

The first crisp days of Autumn always remind me that it is time once again for hunting season: backpack hunting season, that is. Of course, by “hunting” I don’t just mean going to the store and buying a new backpack–that would be like celebrating the arrival of your elk tag with a trip to the local butcher shop–but instead actually hunting and trapping your very own wild backpack–or, at least, a feral one, since the focus of a backpack hunt is usually none other than bacpackus domesticus, also known as “that backpack I just bought you last year.”

Don’t think for a minute though that feral backpack hunting is any less difficult than stalking and catching one that has been born and raised in the wild; oftentimes, due to the feral backpack’s familiarity with houses and household routines, a feral backpack will be the more elusive of the two. Take, for example, the hunter’s first step: studying the backpack’s habits and preferences in order to get a sense of the most likely location for their prey’s lair. In the case of a wild backpack you will usually be able to find a witness/child who can tell you the answers to questions such as “Where did you last see it?”; “Did it come home from school with you?” and “Did you take it on your last sleepover?”; the feral backpack, however–knowing that a successful answer to any one of these questions will most likely result in its eventual capture–will have made sure to have surrounded its movements in a haze of murky obfuscation, like a squid departing in a puff of ink, so that the most you can expect to get out of any potential witnesses will be an uncertain, “Um, maybe…I guess.”

Not that the lack of good eyewitness reports will deter the serious hunter, but it will mean that they will now have to tediously check all the places backpacks have been known to congregate, including underneath the front seat of the car, in a little brother’s room, trampled into a muddy heap next to the swing set, under the bed, and sometimes, in a brilliant piece of reverse psychology, hanging on the hook where they belong.

Of course, once you locate the backpack’s lair you still have to somehow entice it out into the open–another thing that is more difficult with a canny feral backpack than with its wild cousin. Some people believe that this is because some backpacks–most likely the ones owned by children who constantly practice “catch and release” style backpack ownership–have been “caught” so many times they now know every single one of the hunter’s tricks. In fact, sometimes a feral backpack will have become so wise that the only way to recapture it is through the thoroughly unsportsmanlike practice of setting out live bait–usually a new backpack purchased especially for this reason. (The thinking is that when the feral backpack sees the new one it will attempt to bring the domesticated one into its harem, much like mustangs of the open range.)

A slightly less reviled form of “baiting” is to put out a three-week old half-eaten sandwich. While backpacks do not actually consume sandwiches (they live on completed homework assignments and signed permission slips), they are naturally curious creatures whose inquisitiveness will compel them to investigate and hoard the sandwich. (There have been documented case where scientists have found backpacks floating off the coast of Greenland that contained over 400 half-eaten sandwiches, some of them even being liverwurst–a substance that no child has willingly put on their sandwich in the last 75 years.)

Of course, a good backpack hunter also knows that no backpack will stay caught forever; you can no more own a backpack than you can own the Earth. They are, instead, merely borrowed from our children. Or from Staples. Depends on where you shop.