So Gideon is in the middle of 6 weeks speech camp. This week's theme is pirates which means he's walking around the house going Argh. It also gives me the excuse to work in the word booty into a lot of sentences.

The other thing about speech camp is that it's made me self conscious about backpacks. Not self conscious enough to actually do something about it, but enough to develop an awareness.

See I misunderstood. We were given a list of things to bring on the first day -- most importantly a change of clothes for painting and pooping accidents. I assumed these things would stay at camp until they were used. So I packed everything up in a paper grocery bag. I'm the only parent who made such an assumption -- all the other kids had backpacks. For the first three days Gideon came and went to speech camp with all his things in a paper bag, just like a darling little hobo. The bag started tearing and getting pretty sad looking and something had to be done. OK, Gideon has a backpack, two in fact, but only one is big enough for what he needs to bring and we already have a use for that backpack --it's filled with toys and art supplies for daycare. I didn't think he needed a third backpack, but since the paper bag was on its last day he needed something better. So I got him a canvas bag. Out of my office closet. The black AWP Atlanta bag to be precise. I must have harbored some repressed potty training anger cause I figured him showing up to speech camp with a dorky, hideous AWP bag would surely get his ass beat and he'd be better for it, you know, toughen him up. I mean it's AWP, it's asking for a wedgie. Nope. Gideon doesn't care. The other kids don't care. If I was a kid at speech camp, I'd totally seize that opportunity to lay some smack down on the dork with the AWP bag. But I'm not one of the kids at speech camp.

I'm the mom who appears both incredibly cheap and goofy. The failed poet who failed so bad she couldn't even manage to get her kid a proper backpack and makes him trudge around the symbol of her no-contest-winning failure.

And that is my identity for the summer which I will embrace until September when I will take the toys out of his current backpack so he can use it for preschool.