What the Trapper Keeper Taught Me About Privilege
The 80s school supply staple was a status symbol that not everyone could afford.
I was talking to a coworker about a school supply drive she was organizing for low-income kids in our program. Kids are returning to in-person school and are being told to bring as many as four pages of items with them.
“Four pages?” I asked incredulously. “When I was a kid, all you needed was some pencils, a protractor, and a Trapper Keeper.”
Ah, the Trapper Keeper. The most coveted school supply for every kid who was in school in the early 1980s. It was the perfect design, holding folders, notepads, papers, pens, and other supplies in one three-ring binder that sealed close with velcro. The ultimate status symbol.
Unfortunately, not every kid could afford the Trapper Keeper. As one of what of what the nuns at our school referred to as “scholarship kids”, there was no money at our house for a Trapper Keeper.
“You can use a spiral notebook,” my mother grumbled, clearly not understanding that the Trapper Keeper was almost as important as the Jordache jeans that…
