I Can't Keep Track of My Mind, How Can I Keep Track of 3 Backpacks?

I almost drove over my kids' backpacks the other day.  That's right.  All three of them.  I was about to drive off, completely oblivious to this fact, and I would have done it if it wasn't for my son's friend hanging out his car window yelling "STOP!" at me. 

Luckily I didn't just brush this off as kid-shenanigans (that word makes me sound old, doesn't it?).  I stopped, rolled down my window, and heard him yelling, "BACKPACKS!"

That rang a bell.  I'm sorry to say it was a very faint bell, however, and it took me a moment to sift through the various thoughts in my head that had to do with backpacks.

Oh, yeah.

Suddenly it came to me.  On my way to the car after school with my three kids and their respective backpacks, my friend had asked me to look at the tile she'd picked up for her kitchen floor.  I had dropped the backpacks in front of my car and went over to her trunk to see the tile samples.

Then I had blithely put the kids in the car and forgot all about the backpacks.

Imagine if I HAD driven over all of them.  The smashed lunches!  The wrecked homework!  Do you think a teacher would accept that as an excuse?  "My mom drove over my homework."   That wouldn't look good at all.  The teacher would wonder about me even more than usual!

Of course, I'm not the only one who has trouble with backpacks.

Recently my friend put all of her kids' backpacks by her van, then packed her kids in it and drove off, leaving the backpacks on the side of the road.  Luckily a friend drove by and noticed them.

You know, it's just that us moms have too much to think about.  We're making sure all the kids get in the car and get buckled up.  We are usually thinking about what we're going to do for dinner that night, whether the kids have homework, if any kids are going to any play dates (and every parent knows the crazy high-level kind of negotiations that go on with play dates) or if they have hockey or what-have-you.  It's busy.

If I can't keep track of the barest vestiges of a sane mind, how can I possibly keep track of three backpacks?