by Amanda Lawson

Created on: April 21, 2009   Last Updated: April 24, 2009

The Trapper Keeper has gone the way of the dinosaur. Where once upon a time anyone under the age of 20 not only knew what a Trapper Keeper was but either owned one or lusted after one.

When I was in school the type, style, color and image on the front of your Trapper Keeper was almost always directly related to your level of social status in the school popularity hierarchy. My level was nonexistent. In other words I did not have the coveted Trapper Keeper with the image of gamboling kittens or windswept horses on the front and back.

In fact, looking back on my childhood and what has transpired since that point, I believe that not having a Trapper Keeper had a lasting and profound effect on my life. I ended up dropping out of High School and going on to waste several unrecoverable years of my life doing stupid and pointless things. I did not move on to higher education at all. I think it can all be traced back to the lack of colorful, stylized organization.

If I had had the advantage of having one of those shiny, albeit expensive for the time, bastions of organization who knows how far I could or would have gone? I could have been the first female president of our great country. I could have been a major player in the corporate world. I could have been a world renowned brain surgeon! Well maybe not a brain surgeon since I'm not one for blood but you get the point. There but for the Trapper Keeper goes I. In fact when I go on these social websites and see the profiles of the people I went to school with, it's the ones that had the highest level of Trapper Keeping that have become the biggest successes. I wonder if I am the only one who has made this connection. If I am then it must be my goal, nay not my goal but my responsibility to bring this issue to light.

Is it the lack of Trapper Keepers that have caused the quality of teaching in our schools to diminish? Is the fact that our children today do not know the infinite joy of the crisp sound of the Velcro closure ripping open the reason that we have to implement so many standardized tests? Would children who have had the indescribable experience of smelling that sweet, new plastic smell have more confidence that they can and will be a success at school?

The only way that these questions will be answered is to put a Trapper Keeper in every child's hand. "No child left behind" can be changed to "no child left unorganized". I will begin the protest movement immediately by gathering all of my loser friends about me (whom I have a sneaking suspicion never had a Trapper Keeper either) and begin campaigning with the Mead Company to bring back that staple of education. Next step the White House. President Obama probably had a Trapper Keeper which explains a lot.......

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