The backpack
Patrick Hunt 1. Khalil tells me he cannot find his backpack. We are standing in the main lobby where the students enter each morning starting at 7:30. This is an important if tedious part of my job. To greet students and stand sentry as the students file in one by one through the “scanners,”1 depositing their phones first in a little labeled bin and then putting their backpacks, belts, etc. through the scanner before swiping their ID and making their merry way to advisory for check-in. We confiscate what is not allowed and over the course of a few weeks I amass a tidy collection of iPads, cheap perfumes with names like Pleasures Intense, sherbet-hued vape pens, rolling papers, lighters, Arizonas and Frappuccinos (no glass), metal hair picks (no sharp objects), unidentifiable pills (no unidentifiable pills), basketballs, and once, to my great delight, a skateboard. It is not uncommon for things to go missing in the scanner. A set of keys or a bag of chips will get snagged inside on its dark journey, and occasionally I will watch as a student and school safety agent peer into the scanner’s mouth, puzzled, the conveyor belt rolling and rolling but nothing emerging while the other students in line shift from foot to foot and throw their heads back with 1 The New York City Public Schools’ cyberpunk euphemism for “metal detectors.”