Backpack

The product: Backpack The expert: Pediatric orthopedic specialist Dr. Stuart Weinstein, first vice president of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons What I want: Kids to have more time to get to their lockers in between classes. The volume and weight of material they carry to and from school has multiplied, and students seem to carry everything they own in these backpacks. I must have: Padded straps and a waist strap to help support and distribute the weight. The bag should be well-padded to keep sharp book corners from poking through.

YOU WOULD think it would be a fairly simple proposition, but for school systems like Montgomery County it's a can brimming with worms. Who's authorized to send fliers, invitations, meeting notices, newsletters and other printed materials home from school in those ubiquitous backpacks? And what materials are allowable in what might be called the Backpack Express? The school system and the PTA, of course, need to keep in touch with parents. But what about the Boy Scouts, a local church advertising vacation Bible school, a summer camp run by the YMCA or Camp Good News, an after-school Bible club?

SARASOTA, Fla. - The hunt for a missing 11-year-old girl, whose videotaped abduction crystallized every parent's fear, ended another day with no sign of Carlie Jane Brucia or certain knowledge of her fate. Sheriff's officials and the FBI asked the public yesterday to look in gullies, down dirt paths and under dense growth for any sign of Carlie's pink backpack. The hope is that the sixth-grader's book bag will reveal clues as to what happened to her, where she is now or if she's still alive.

An eighth-grade boy brought a handgun to Oklahoma Road Middle School yesterday morning and fired a single shot in a school bathroom in an apparent suicide attempt, police said. No one was hurt in the incident at the Eldersburg school, authorities said. The boy, 13, took his father's .44-caliber revolver from a locked box at home and brought the gun to school in a backpack, said Maj. Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman. The boy fired the handgun about 10 a.m. in an empty boys' bathroom while pupils at the school were between classes, police said.

IT IS THE first day of school, and my daughter will need a new backpack. As it is for most high school girls, a backpack is a fashion purchase - as opposed to something that comes under the heading of school supplies. It is hard to imagine, I know, but there is such as thing as the "wrong" backpack. This year, however, everyone at Annapolis High School will be carrying the same backpack, or they will carry none at all. New principal Deborah Williams has ruled that only clear backpacks may be carried in the halls of the school.

A vac on your back Forget that you'll look like George Jetson. There could be worse things. Just keep thinking how the new VX2000 Backpack Vac will ease your vacuuming chores. The press release describes the vacuum as lightweight and explains how the 8-pound vacuum is worn like a school backpack or baby carrier and distributes the weight of the vacuum "comfortably on the hips via a padded waist belt" (if 8 pounds can qualify as comfortable). The Backpack Vac's manufacturer, ProTeam Inc., maintains that the vacuum will clean vinyl, carpeting, tiles and hardwood floors faster and easier than cumbersome rolling vacuums.

It stands to reason that in a game that relies on gloves, even the staff at Camden Yards has to show acumen. Yesterday, senior managers walked the ballpark to review security details and look for things that need to be painted, bolted, scrubbed or vacuumed before the first game of the season on Monday. "It's pretty much a white-glove inspection tour," said Doug Rosenberger, event operations manager. "We want the ballpark to look like it did on the first Opening Day in 1992." Rosenberger and his boss, Roger Hayden, found their fingertips clean, a testament to nearly six months of offseason work by stadium maintenance crews.

An unidentified man was being held late yesterday at the county Detention Center after he was detained in a Forest Hill grocery store because a manager called the sheriff's office to report a suspicious customer. About 9 a.m., an employee of Klein's in the 2100 block of Rockspring Road said he noticed fumes from a man carrying a backpack, said spokeswoman Ginger Rigney. The state fire marshal's office bomb squad searched the backpack and found powdered drink mix. The man was charged with hindering a police investigation because he would not disclose his identity.

Kim Rehman says it is costing her "a small fortune" to buy two sets of textbooks for her daughter, Amber, a 10th-grader at Garrison Forest School. But it's less expensive to buy duplicates than to take her daughter to a doctor or physical therapist frequently because of muscle spasms. The Rehmans, who live in Owings Mills, blame the weight of Amber's backpack - nearly 30 pounds of books and belongings - for the back pain that she has experienced since sixth grade. "It was too much weight for her to carry around," Rehman said.

IF YOU'VE watched children walking to school, you've seen that some of them look more like Himalayan Sherpas bearing supplies to classes on Mount Everest than children of middle-class families living in a modern society. Carrying overloaded backpacks is not the exception today, but the rule. What students put into their backpacks and how they carry them have produced some startling statistics. Arnold chiropractor Diane Kelly does the math: If your child carries a backpack that weighs 12 pounds and lifts that weight 10 times a day, the child will lift 120 pounds a day, or 21,600 pounds in one 180-day school year.