Trapper Keeper: The First iPad
August 09, 2011, By Craig J. Heimbuch 0 comments
The price was already at $22 when I put in my bid, an ambitious $35. Factor in the $8.50 for shipping and this could be a pretty expensive, rather pointless purchase. But there was something driving me. An unknown force of a long-forgotten youth. I had to have this Trapper Keeper; it had to be so from the moment I saw the grainy pictures on eBay. It was classic. Computer-generated designs on the cover, the kind of design that screamed opening title sequence from "Saved By the Bell." It came with a couple of folders and was listed as in 'near-perfect' condition. Near-perfect? The fact that this thing existed at all was perfection incarnate.
I upped my bid to $36, hoping that extra buck might do the trick.
I know what you're thinking. It's weird for a full-grown man, a husband and father of three, to be obsessing over 20-year-old office products. I won't argue that point. It is weird. Creepy. And yet, oh so gratifying.
It's this time of year that does it, the whole season of winding down summer and gearing up for school. When I was a student, it was a time of mixed emotions—dread at the thought of school, regret about not having done more with my summer, excitement to move up a rung on the grade-based social ladder. If there was a tempering factor in the whole thing, it was the annual trip to the big box store to buy school supplies. There was just something so thrilling about it. All those cardboard crates of Duotang folders, unscathed boxes of Crayolas and pencils. Don't get me started on pencils. There were social ramifications to the kind of mechanical pencil you had in my junior high that was on par with the quality and brightness of your new school shoes. Only once did I match achievements in both areas by buying a draftsman-grade mechanical pencil and saving up my lawn mowing money all summer for a pair of Air Jordan Vs. Didn't help me at the seventh grade dance any, but at least I wasn't the kid with the fat grip wood pencil and knock-offs from Thom McAn.
I still feel sorry for that kid.
And while shoes and other, lesser supplies were important, the thing that got me the most excited was the selection of that year's Trapper Keeper. So much went into it. Do you go with a plain color and decorate with Garbage Pail Kids stickers later? What about a design? There was something to be said about having the cartoon Ferarri on the cover, but geometric designs were trendy and hip. Finding one with geometric designs and real objects—an Airwalk high top perhaps—was like the Holy Grail of binders. A rumor. A myth.
