Courtney enjoyed a Happy Meal when she was eight or ten, but she’d also stare out the passenger window at cement pours around some scrabbed up corner and say, “What about the animals that live there?” or “They could have put a playground there.” I thought: now’s the time. I’ll teach her to get the most from our limited money. She won’t be a typical American; she won’t get fooled into buying the first cheap thing she finds. We started with backpacks at Wal-Mart. We counted the number of pockets and examined the probably Chinese stitching to guess how long it would last. We went to Target. We compared blue backpacks with no ornaments to green backpacks with Bugs Bunny on them. Courtney said some of the packs at Wal-Mart had other pockets for pencils in the smallest front zippered pocket. I made a note. We drove to K-Mart. We scouted the outdoor section to see if the packs there were better than those in the back-to-school section. We went to a bookstore for coffee and hot chocolate while we decided. I stood in line. Courtney remembered she needed a raincoat. We used more gasoline.
