Riding shotgun

I threw my huge backpack in the front passenger seat of the Jetta last night as I headed for class. As I backed out of the driveway, the “fasten your seatbelt” light came on and started dinging. Since my seatbelt was securely fastened (as always), I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

Turns out the Jetta has a little safety feature that tries to detect whether there’s a person riding shotgun based on the weight of whatever’s in the front seat. And my backpack, filled with law books, apparently weighs enough to require being buckled in.

The only way I could stop the dinging was to buckle in my favorite little sidekick.

That has to be a sign that I need to stop carrying the darn thing around and start using its wheels, no matter how dorky it looks. I’m basically giving a piggyback ride to a person every night!