Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

“Who, me?”

This is a tale about how you don’t notice gradual changes when every day you’re around what’s changing. So I realized it was with my well-loved leather backpack.

I live with a rabbit named Robbin. Robbin turned ten a few months ago, and though his body is experiencing typical old-age infirmities, he’s as spunky as ever and maintains his routines. One of the things he likes to do is sit amidst my shoes by the front door. I call this Shoe Bunny. He doesn’t really do anything with them; I suspect that because shoes are somewhat his own shape and size, maybe they provide him some social comfort.

My backpack lives at the end of my kitchen island. Since I started working out again, I often set my gym shoes beside my backpack to air out. Robbin likes those shoes, too. A fairly new morning routine for Robbin is to sit and groom those shoes while I’m in the shower and he (and the cats) are waiting for me to serve their breakfast. By “grooming,” I mean he slobbers all over them. Sometimes, he just moves on over to my backpack.

Two Mondays mornings ago, I went to pack up my backpack for the day. I discovered that one of the straps was broken. My first thought was that it had finally worn out. I mean, look at the thing. I replaced the leather drawstring with a shoelace long ago. More recently, I lined the top with fluorescent orange Duct tap when one of the holes tore through. And I swear it used to be black, not brown. But still, just as recently as a month ago, I received a compliment on its “shabby chic” look.

The old backpack in its well-worn glory.

But then I remembered that the strap had been intact on Friday when last I used it. I looked at my sweet, innocent rabbit sitting nearby and realized he must have gone for a little leather breakfast appetizer. There would be no way to repair the strap.

I’ve been trying to remember when I got this backpack. I think it was about fifteen years ago, maybe only thirteen. Fifteen, thirteen, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve beat the crap out of it and it doesn’t owe me anything.

So the time had finally come to stress out about finding a new, large, non-nylon backpack. I paid US$50 for the old backpack all those years ago. I wasn’t holding out much hope for finding a leather bag that I could afford but I fired up the internet and went shopping. I search for “large leather backpack.” To my astonishment, one of the first images that came up was of my exact backpack! It’s been so long, I wouldn’t have expected it to still exist, but there it was. But how much would it cost in modern dollars? I figured it would be at least $200. I tentatively clicked the link. SAY WHAT?! Only $100! Was I seeing things? No. A few different sites had the bag and the price ranged from $94 to $115. I chose eBags.com because they had the lowest price as well as good customer reviews.

The bag arrived Thursday at the office. I was so excited that I forgot to thank Chris the UPS guy when he handed the box off to me. I chased him down in the hall and corrected that oversight. I opened the box and unpacked a pristine, black, stiff, leather backpack. Everyone in the office duly oohed and ahed.

But the real fun began when I got home and set the old and the new side by side for the photo op. Nobody who has seen the picture believes that it’s exactly the same bag! Do you?

These are exactly the same bag.

Really, I swear!