Sometimes, when you’re feeling bored or down in the dumps, all you need is a little imagination to perk you up and brighten your day. My name is Benny, and I’m delighted to share how my heart was filled with joy, thanks to a magical backpack I found one sunny daytime.
It all started with the most ordinary gray backpack you’d ever see. It was chucked carelessly under my bed, where it lay neglected for quite a while. I borrowed it from my mum who said it had once belonged to my sister when she was my age. That fine day, feeling bored and blue, I dragged it out and unpacked it. What did I find? A bright-orange, oversized tennis ball, a green bottle of baby shampoo, my dad’s favorite yellow tie stained with soup from three dinners ago, and a carrot. Just an ordinary day. And just an ordinary backpack.
But then I had an idea. I grabbed a pile of books from under my bed, too grown up for me now, and stuffed them into the backpack. I swung it over my shoulder and trotted off to the park to try them out. The first published book I pulled out and opened up was Magic Potions. I picked up my old pieces of the bizarre things from the backpack, skipped over to the playground, and mixed all the contents together. In an instant, a huge cloud of glittery smoke rose up into the air! What happens if I had mixed them up in a different order? I pulled out the second one: Discover the World with Benny.
Suddenly, my backpack exploded with beautiful bright balloons of every color imaginable!
I started skipping down to the jungle gym with my balloon friends. One string wanted to just dump onto the ground but I kept the others up and balanced like a circus performer. Only it all went wrong, and I had a Freddie Baloon-shaped hole in my favorite green tree.
The kindergarten gang was having their Friday cooking lesson and I just had to show Ruth what was happening! If you haven’t worked it out by now, Ruth is my favorite friend, whose shoulder I realized I was crying on on my second day at my new school. I hastily stuffed the books into my bike basket where Yvonne was already tucked up safe and sound. Yvonne’s my trusty toy pug dog, by the way. We all help each other sort out problems. Ruth swung herself towards me and quizzed, “How come you’ve got a pink and green book?”
“It’s Pinkness Meets Greeness!” I added proudly. Then I quietly told Ruth everything about Jeff, the boy with freckles who seemed to be my new friend but was quickly turning nasty.
“You need us,” Ruth said firmly.
“I’m scared of him. He’s nasty on purpose,” I replied.
“He won’t expect us girls,” she grinned.
“Will you come with me, with Yvonne?” I begged.
“Of course. If you stop sniveling.”
We whipped up our bikes and rode to beach. Ruth came flying past, seeming to hydroplane right over a few waves that were ripping into the shore. “Yay!” I screamed, grinning from ear to ear. I pedaled as fast as I could go over large bubble holes left by incoming water, but everything went wrong: I came to a bump and the basket tipped sideways, catapulting Yvonne and the two whole books into the air!
Glancing mid-seriousness, I noticed Yvonne sailing off into the ocean on a bright pink wave. What was I to do? It was bad enough losing the other book into the depths of the water, where no child can ever retrieve a lost book.
Rushing back down the slope at full speed, my heart raced too far ahead. I creased my fingers and cried, “You can do it! Get Yvonne off the water into your backpack before…HELP!” Panic-stricken, I was about to leap into the ocean after her.
Suddenly, another wave tossed my pressed boat, carrying it into the back of WHAM!
“Thanks, honey,” I yelled up to the enormous wave.
“What are friends for?” The wave squeaked.
Jeff had stopped right where he was, a grim looking statue pointing out to sea. I could now nicely see poor Yvonne the pug pressed beneath the pine boat, water completely covering the rest of her little frame.
We whipped ourselves off our bikes, leaving them to crash down in all their jangle. I took the left side of Yvonne and Ruth the other side, carefully griping her up on a large handful of seawater from around her.
“What’s he doing?” I wondered.
“Swishing with his new wave buddy, uncle and grandpa,” Ruth replied.
“Now high-fiving,” I solemnly stated.
“Not half flamingoing!”
And that’s what I did when I saw Yvonne again. Half laughing, half flamingoing with one leg bending up in prayer, half a wave that looked like a flaming sight to my longing eye rushed towards us. A look of congratulations shot through Jeff’s heartfelt moment.
Then I’d got everything I needed to make the single-handed school begrudged. The fateful moment! Ruth and I left Yvonne on the blackest blanket resting up, and timed right with a small gap between the waves, we bounded the hammock for dear life.
The first driblets stopped and we checked ourselves out. Sure enough, none soaked through, with peace and safety returning to Ruth and the horizon. But Ruth’s pair of shoes was much worse for wear. The man from the book seemed to struggle back to me. Then, finally, off came my own shoe, just as it managed to whisper, “Will you be able to save me, Benny?”
“Of course!” I promptly assured, wherever it took me.
To short-hopping people its answer was midcurrent, and I had to keep up as the shrinking gap got smaller and smaller. “I’d never dream to harm it or send anything bad back!”
At that, everyone pointed astoundingly to a tiny question mark soon-traveling back towards me. Somehow, in that heartbeat, I’d caught their look of elation, too, nobody believing it!
And then we were all linked back together, sending a kind of shockwave that made all the adults obey. Jeff stared at us longingly. The second half had lost its captain, and desperately needed the whole.
The whisper broke into a laugh, then continued, “Not undone but long in various scuba diving blunders, those books and your Jura friend. Dry soon enough.”
After a while the three ice creams were now five, and half an hour of wiping and shaking clothes immensely needed! “Welcome to the tear-thirds section!” the piles of blue and red foam grinned.
“Philosophy today?” persistently nudged Ruth.
“Somedays.”