Take a load off your shoulders

This may strike you as a trivial matter but many of us are staggering under its weight. Some have needed physiotherapy for the pain in their shoulder; others have felt compelled to embark on a relationship in order to share the burden, literally.

My subject is bags. The ones we carry each time we leave the house and submit for inspection whenever we enter an office building or a shopping mall.

Since prep school I have been accustomed to lugging a heavy bag every day. In elementary school I needed two bags to transport all the stuff I needed in class: textbooks, a notebook for each subject, a pencil case full to bursting (I collected erasers and insisted on bringing all of them), a box of crayons and other materials for art projects, materials for homework (for class reports, a volume of the encyclopedia), P.E. uniform, towel, rubber shoes, and Nancy Drew book or whatever I was reading at the time.

My lunch was carried separately, in those tin lunch boxes now prized by collectors, with Batman, Scooby-Doo or Sigmund and the Sea Monster themes; or in an insulated bag that was supposed to keep food warm and didn’t. I never used a locker: then as now, I preferred to have all my things with me.

In high school I carried fewer items, but they weighed more. The more I detested math and chemistry, the more non-required books I needed to keep from falling asleep in class. The collected works of Harold Robbins and Judith Krantz not only kept me from going into a coma in chemistry lab (people’s hair did not catch fire from Bunsen burners often enough to provide regular entertainment), they also provided the only sex education I ever got in school. (Oh sure, we learned about reproduction — on the cellular level. Mitochondria and ribosomes bore no resemblance to the heavy breathing described in those bad, awful, riveting books.)

I didn’t carry a lunch box anymore but I carried a Walkman, which in its metal casing was even heavier. Naturally this required cassettes — three or more, and four spare batteries.

In college my bag contained even more books — I majored in comparative literature, which required taking many dusty volumes from the library stacks, Walkman, back issues of Rolling Stone magazine found in bargain bins, and a thick folder containing hard copies of every short story I’d ever written. I was already freelancing for magazines at the time, so I often had a tape recorder in my bag.

Some guys would appear in class carrying only one ballpoint pen and a blue book (the exam booklet) folded and stashed in a back pocket. I envied the lightness of their daily existence but could not imagine leaving my books and equipment at home. You might as well go into battle without your sword, shield, helmet, lance, hauberk, greaves...

It stands to reason that once my formal education ended the load would lighten. Nope. When I started working my bag became a portable house, full of stuff I might need — such as a small, bright flashlight for retrieving items that had fallen onto the floor at the cinema. The fact that these needs arose maybe once a year was not reason enough to take the things out of my bag.

Of course I couldn’t go anywhere without my own soundtrack — I had to protect my ears from Air Supply — a Discman, and later an iPod. And being cold-blooded I carried a jacket for air-conditioned places and a hand towel for sweat.

My main bag was usually augmented by a tote bag. Don’t even mention assignments: those called for MacBook, camera, adaptors, cables and so on. I was a backpacker in my own town.

Until recently these were the contents of my shoulder bag: three notebooks (journal, assignments, short stories), five Pilot V-Ball pens, a scarf (I used to have horrific coughs so I learned to wrap my throat), a sweater (it gets cold in mostly-empty cinemas), a folding umbrella, a pack of tissues, a large hairbrush (big hair needs big brush), sunglasses, one or two books I’m reading, lip balm, wallet with ATM cards, discount cards and cash, coin purse (so I don’t have to root for change when I’m paying the cab driver), keys, phone, and 30GB iPod.

Women who use makeup have yet another bag to hold their compacts, eyelash curlers, etc. This make-up kit rides inside their main handbag like a space shuttle in the mother ship, ready to be taken out on expeditions to the ladies’ room. Some genius has even invented an organizer for women who like to change handbags often — an inner bag holding all of the lady’s things, easily removed and placed in a different handbag.

Recently something momentous happened. I bought a Penguin Books tote bag and liked it so much I decided to make it my primary bag. (It helped that I had a twinge in my shoulder — the vicarious pain of watching tennis players make 200 kph serves for five hours.) Obviously I had to cull the contents of my bag to make it work. After some agonizing, I managed to limit my daily load to: one pocket-size Moleskine, wallet, flat comb, keys, phone, five pens (some things are non-negotiable), scarf, thin sweater, folding umbrella, tissues, sunglasses, lip balm, one book, and an iPod Shuffle.

So far the new system has functioned efficiently, but you never know when you’re going to need a stapler.