How do you protect against backpacks?
When I was a kid, I did not have a backpack. I had a bookbag.
My kids, who grew up with those familiar canvas totes slung over their shoulder seemingly as another appendage, still question what exactly a "bookbag" is.
I'm not quite sure when the bookbag went the way of the dinosaurs, but I know that as usual I was behind the curve. I seem to remember when I got to the University of Colorado in the mid-'70s coming to the realization that every guy seemed to have a skateboard under one arm, and a backpack slung over the other. I had neither. Nothing new about that.
Today the backpage is part of our American dress code. Schoolkids realize this is now an essential. Even business now conforms, with many execs toting those laptops and tablets in a backpack, eschewing what was once a sign of their status - the brief case.
I carry a backpack, a laptop bag and a brief case with me most days when I go to work. I'm not sure what kind of status that gives me, if any. Maybe the status who spend entirely too much time dealing with work.
I have been thinking of backpacks since 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. A fairly harried afternoon was about to get a lot more frenetic. I was on my way back to the office after a meeting in West Chester. That's what I heard the familiar staccato "beep-beep-beep" coming from the soundtrack to my life - KYW Newsradio 1060 - that informed me that terror once again had visited America.
As the coverage unfolded, I was struck by the idea of backpacks, in part because much of the early speculation centered on the possibility that backpacks had exploded.
How many backpacks do you think were in the area of the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday? And how do you protect people from something that everyone has slung over their shoulder.
I don't think we're going back to bookbags anytime soon.
I don't think we're going back to a world in which we didn't think about terror attacks anytime soon either.
My kids, who grew up with those familiar canvas totes slung over their shoulder seemingly as another appendage, still question what exactly a "bookbag" is.
I'm not quite sure when the bookbag went the way of the dinosaurs, but I know that as usual I was behind the curve. I seem to remember when I got to the University of Colorado in the mid-'70s coming to the realization that every guy seemed to have a skateboard under one arm, and a backpack slung over the other. I had neither. Nothing new about that.
Today the backpage is part of our American dress code. Schoolkids realize this is now an essential. Even business now conforms, with many execs toting those laptops and tablets in a backpack, eschewing what was once a sign of their status - the brief case.
I carry a backpack, a laptop bag and a brief case with me most days when I go to work. I'm not sure what kind of status that gives me, if any. Maybe the status who spend entirely too much time dealing with work.
I have been thinking of backpacks since 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. A fairly harried afternoon was about to get a lot more frenetic. I was on my way back to the office after a meeting in West Chester. That's what I heard the familiar staccato "beep-beep-beep" coming from the soundtrack to my life - KYW Newsradio 1060 - that informed me that terror once again had visited America.
As the coverage unfolded, I was struck by the idea of backpacks, in part because much of the early speculation centered on the possibility that backpacks had exploded.
How many backpacks do you think were in the area of the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday? And how do you protect people from something that everyone has slung over their shoulder.
I don't think we're going back to bookbags anytime soon.
I don't think we're going back to a world in which we didn't think about terror attacks anytime soon either.
Comments