Family Time -- Steve Smith

My first school locker was at Bancroft Junior High School in Los

Angeles in 1968.

Bancroft was a beautiful old school in the middle of the Hollywood

movie scene near Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. I remember

the last episode of the television show “The Fugitive” -- a Quinn Martin

production -- was filmed there.

Actually, I had two lockers, as did everyone else in the school. The

one in the main building was for books and other studious stuff. The

other was in the boys’ locker room attached to the gymnasium. A locker

room is a good place to have lockers.

Back then, lockers weren’t used for much other than books and lunch.

Oh sure, there were probably a few radicals who kept a few personal items

in their locker, but mostly it was a way station; a chance to drop off

one load of books and pick up another on the way to the next class.

Back then, no one kept plans for a pipe bomb in their locker. No one

kept a loaded gun, and no one kept a pint of whiskey there. Lockers were

lockers, and anyone stupid enough to keep weapons or contraband in a

place where the authorities had unlimited access deserved what they got.

After all, that’s why we had car trunks.

Across the country, lockers have been disappearing. The murders at

Columbine High School three years ago put the final nail in the coffin

for many schools. At Columbine, 13 people were killed and 23 wounded, and

the suspects were supposed to have used their lockers to store weapons

from time to time.

Before the blazing firepower at Columbine, and after my time in the

school system, the lowering locker tally was because of the suspicion of

illegal drugs. Lockers were seen as offices out of which kids were making

all kinds of drug deals. I am certain some of that is true.

So school districts started doing away with lockers as though that

would solve so many problems. No lockers, no problems.

Had I been prescient, I would have invested my meager portfolio in

whatever company is the nation’s leading manufacturer of backpacks the

moment I first heard about the demise of the school locker.

Ah, yes, the backpack. That’s the two-ton transport device used by

children to do what the locker used to do. They’re functional and fun and

often, they are dangerous.

In December 1998, the Consumer Products Safety Commission released a

report stating that heavy backpacks caused an estimated 3,000 emergency

room visits by children ages 5 to 14. In September, the state Assembly

voted 69 to 0 to spend your money to study the issue.

One survey conducted by D.D. Pasco, a physical therapist, et al,

showed children ages 11 to 13 use both backpack straps only 16.6% of the

time. This is significant because using only one strap can greatly

increase the damage to a kid’s musculoskeletal system.

“One-strappers promote lateral spinal bending and shoulder elevation

as well as significantly altering spatial and temporal gait parameters

while decreasing stride length and increasing stride frequency,” the

study reported.

Another study showed that “cervical lateral flexion was significantly

increased when wearing one strap as compared to two. [There was] a linear

increase in head-forward posture and thoracic flexion deviations as

backpack weight increased.”

In plain English, that means that carrying a backpack with one strap

is bad. Any time a backpack is worn with a single strap, there is an

asymmetrical load placed on the skeletal structure and spine. For mature

frames, one-strapping is no big deal. But imagine putting an already

heavy load on a tiny frame, then knocking it off balance, and you have a

good idea of the danger.

There are a few ways to reduce the danger of heavy backpacks.

One is to buy a sling-strap, sling-type backpack. This style centers

the load close to the spine’s midline and forces balance.

Another way is to educate kids on the dangers of heavy backpacks and

the risks of carrying them with only one strap. Perhaps we could call the

program “BARE” for “Backpack Abuse Resistance Education.”

Still another way is to get a rolling backpack, although by the time

you put the thing on wheels, it’s no longer a “back” pack, it’s luggage.

The last two methods of reducing the risk of backpack injury make too

much sense and will never be implemented. The first is to reduce the

amount of homework we give our kids. Less homework, less stuff to carry

around.

The last method is to bring back lockers and random locker inspections

and stop making millions of kids suffer for the bad behavior of a few.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers

may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.