The Mysterious Backpack Caper

Friday morning was quite an adventure in my neighborhood. It started out routinely enough - the kids were out at the bus stop across the street from my house, their backpacks neatly placed on the ground in the order in which they arrived (it's very important to hold your place in line to get onto an empty bus). Anyway, all was well in the land of suburbia until the menacing minivan pulled up.

Okay, that's probably a bit dramatic but just play with me for a bit. I see this van that I don't recognize pull up and, being the helicopter mom that I am and seeing that only the youngest kids are out, I immediately open the door to peer across the street and see who this stranger is. Just a man loading some of my neighbor's trash -maybe an item they've placed out - into the back of his van. That's not all that unusual with the economy and all (and they do have some good-looking trash).

So I wait until he drives away, the rest of the children have arrived on scene, and all is well again. Or so I thought. Soon my neighbor called me with the ridiculous news: the 2 youngest girls - including my daughter and hers - were missing their backpacks. Yup, you guessed it. Minivan guy drove off with the kids homework and fresh lunches. Huh??? You just can't make this kind of stuff up. It was irritating and absurd and really, really funny.

After telling our kids that they shouldn't place their backpacks stuffed with their most valued possessions and their life's work against a trash can, we got them onto the bus and jumped into our cars to try and hunt the unsuspecting backpack thief down. Note: We were in our pajamas and slippers and didn't look as good as Jessica Biel does in this picture.

Anyway, afer making about 273 calls to everyone we knew in town, we had a stroke of good fortune. One friend on a nearby street was savy enough to call her neighbor who had cleaned out her basement and had quite an impressive curbside spread. While she was on the phone with her, menacing minivan pulled up!! Our trap had worked! (do you hear the "Baretta" music playing here?)

So she explained to the poor man - who really wasn't a thief at all - that he had inadvertantly taken our kids backpacks with a month-long project on Argentina and a Christmas play costume. He was happy to return them (and I'll bet even happier to be rid of the caravan of cars and robed women chasing him).

My neighbor drove the backpacks to school and as she pulled up the kids got off the bus and walked by the car! It turned out that they walked into school - with their backpacks - as if nothing ever happened. Little did their teachers know the drama behind it all!

Can you imagine..."Sorry I don't have my homework, a trash-picker stole my backpack!" That puts "my dog ate it" to shame.