Heading toward that mid-day slump, or never quite woke up this morning? Well, your troubles are over. Here is your free midday pick-me-up! Save it to your computer and play it at that critical moment each day when your head is about to crash into your in-box. Pass it on to your friends and coworkers, especially that guy snoring in the cubicle next door.

Here’s a challenge. First, watch this video and then come back. (No scrolling ahead!)

Okay, now, be honest.

Did you or did you not shout out, “Timber!” Be honest! Forward this to friends and family so they can join the challenge too! (Extra points to those of you who shouted “Timber!” both times the tree fell!)

Just this morning I was walking a child to school and I was wearing her backpack because it was so darn heavy. A neighbor kid saw me and said, in jest, “I like your backpack, Mrs. B!” and I told him that I never had a backpack. “Ahhhhh, that’s so sad!” he said. “How did you carry your books?”

And I got to thinking about it. I walked back and forth to school every day (in wind, in rain, in sleet, in snow, uphill . . .okay, I’ll stop). I had what was called a “bookstrap” that was made of rubber and hooked around a small pile of books, which I then carried in my arms. And that was that. No big deal. Yet, in all these years of back-to-school shopping as a mom, I have yet to see a bookstrap for sale. Do they still sell these things? Has anyone seen them? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Why are kids dragging home these 20-pound backpacks every day? They’re rolling them down the street like carry-on luggage, and with the new public school dress codes requiring khakis and collared shirts, they look like little Business Casual road warriors on their way through LaGuardia. No wonder they need chiropractors.

Oooh, remember that? I can just sit and look at that photo all day. I can feel the kickstand cracking through hard, dry dirt on a mid-summer day or digging into hot, melting tar. I can hear baseball cards held on with wooden clothespins smacking the spokes, and see the way we rode these things in long, loopy waves, back and forth across the street, nowhere special to go, nothing pressing to do. And, if I close my eyes and listen really carefully, I think I hear the ice cream truck.

Ever since I was involved in that 8-car pile-up on I-85 in downtown Atlanta the first year I moved here from New York, I’ve been a bit of a nervous driver (and a worse passenger). Anything that involves me taking highways anywhere is up for serious negotiation. So it amazes me that there seems to be a proliferation of Party Buses all over the country. Atlanta has really the cutest of them all with the Fur Bus (it is completely decorated inside with fake fur and it practically causes a riot when it shows up at least once every year on the last day of school for some lucky graduating 5th-grader’s end-of-year party). The last thing I would consider a party, however, would be to get in a vehicle driven by someone I don’t know to drive around Atlanta’s seven-lane highways for several hours. That’s like Dante’s Inferno to me, but hey, folks seem to love this.

I, on the other, hand, actually hired the Tumblebus for a party once. This is an old school bus retrofitted with gymnastics equipment. The bus parks in front of your house, and doesn’t move. The kids go on board and have their tumbling party. They come in your house and eat cake, and then they leave. Perfect, yes? I thought so, except the Tumblebus never showed up — some scheduling mishap. And it was January. And I had 15 six-year-olds at my house and nothing planned. Fur flew.