Load

Carrying a heavy backpack is very much like yoga. It can - and, in fact, it is supposed to - give you shoulder ache unless you have the know-how to gain control of your mind and body.

My backpack was pretty overloaded today. That's my daughter's school field trip, and I went too. I brought with me the camera, a box of puzzle game, a picture book about all of our 206 bones (and about 450 bones for babies, in case you don't know), four story books from Biff, Chip and Kipper series. My daughter carried her own camera, lunch box (for my lunch, too) and water bottle. Okay. That's not all. We had colour pencils, sketch book and so forth.

We just knew that the backpack is for fun, and we felt okay with each of our backpacks. None of us thought too much about the weight of our backpacks.

I'm a firm believer in Lena Horne's dictum "It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."

On the way back from the field trip, one of the boys in my group told me his backpack was way too heavy. As a parent volunteer, I should help him.

"I can see that your backpack is huge. Let's see - okay, do you want me to help you?" I asked.

The boy nodded.

I thought I should carry his backpack. But this is not exactly what happened. Or at any rate, this is not what I expected. My daughter came up and volunteered to carry the backpack for her classmate. We both smiled, put on the backpacks, and off we went. It was hard to say who was prouder, daughter or father.