December 14, 2007
Travel
From my perspective cooped up here in a room that I call a “study” (what with all the books) and CP, the Librarian, calls the “stacks” (what with all the dusty books), I sometime dream of being a travel writer. Maybe it would get me up and out. Trouble is, I don’t like travel.
For one thing, I resent Uncle Sugar’s Airplane Protectors who on a recent trip threw away my 3.75-ounce bottle of Listerine because it was a quarter ounce over the limit. They already had a barrel full of such wherewithal. Do you ever wonder maybe whether they start their own Department of Homeland Security Flea Market? A sort of latter day G I Surplus. And thanks to the shoe-fuse bomber, I once broke a shoelace and almost missed my flight.
One of the things I dislike about travel is that I have yet learned to pack. I’ve never taken a trip where I had exactly what I needed in the way of stuff, always too much. And it seems that it only gets harder to haul it all around. I tried one of those cases on wheels once and seemed always to be running into long, steep stairs in escalatorless airports.
Travel writers seem to have a lot more fun than travel agents and to be popular, as well. Like all those other celebrities, they get to sign books. The movie, The Accidental Tourist, is a case in point. It’s from a 1985 novel by Anne Tyler that won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. What I remember most about it is Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, and the family that kept all their stuff in the kitchen pantry in alphabetical order.
Speaking of alphabets, my packing ideal must be Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries. She mostly wears jeans, sweat shirts, and running shoes. She owns one dress, a little black one for whenever the occasion demands, proving that need is a better packing system for travel than want. Trouble is, I never seem to be able to tell which from which, a fact that comes mighty close to describing my life, for that matter. No wonder. (Okay. So this is a set-up for some wiseacre to say something about a little black dress.)
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