Carrying On

As an undergraduate psychology major, I heard we all go through life with baggage. I didn’t know then I was supposed to take that idea literally. Now I do.

A few months ago, I stepped out of my college office and started walking. About halfway down the hall, I sensed something was wrong. I looked around. Everything seemed fine. No masked villain or, worse, disgruntled student trailed my steps. Behind, beside and before me, the scene was the same as it had been every other day. Yet, something was off.

After a few more steps, it dawned on me. I was walking down the hallway empty-handed, even my pockets were mostly empty. I felt light; suddenly I was but a cloud, a free-floating puff of happy vapor.   I realized how rarely I go anywhere these days without lugging along bags, boxes, or notebooks full of unruly papers.

As with most travails in life, I blame the kids. Parenting requires sacrifice. One of the first things to go is the opportunity to walk around with your hands free. From the first day, you are carrying something, often the child himself. This changes you.

Only after having a baby do you realize just how redundant two hands are. Anything you think might require two hands like, say, landing an airliner full of passengers, parents can do while holding a screaming, squirming infant. I would rather have a father of three do my heart surgery single-handed than have his childless colleague change the oil in my Honda.

Should a parent of a small child find both hands available, she will be amazed at what a cinch life has become. This is why mothers who return to work when their children are older and they are once again free to employ all their limbs are known to break up the monotony of the work day by screaming, “This is too easy! Give me a real challenge! Somebody put a blindfold on me!”

Not only are you as a parent always hauling kids around, you also have to grapple with the necessary equipment.  Once you become a parent, a simple trip to the grocery store requires more gear than Caesar took with him on his conquest of Gaul. One of the great deceptions of modern life is calling the massive tote into which parents must shove everything from quarts of milk to the engine of a the 1994 Ford Taurus they are having repaired a “diaper bag.”  It would be more honest to simply call it the “life support machine.”

Work doesn’t help.  There are plenty of things my job requires me to carry.  After getting to work every morning, the first thing I do is empty the contents of my pockets onto my desk.  The second thing I do is spend an hour trying to find my desk.

See, once I arrived on campus last fall I was given keys to the building my office is in, to the wing of the building my office is in, and, naturally, to my office. There were more keys to more locks in more buildings. I now carry so many keys people just assume I’m a jailer.

They know I am carrying this tangle of toothy metal because the bulge in my pocket makes me look like I am desperately afraid of scurvy and am trying to ward it off by always having a grapefruit available. Most men keep their pants up with a belt. Because I travel with approximately a ton of metal in my pockets, I keep mine up with five feet of rebar sewn into my inseams. This, as I’m sure you can imagine, makes sitting in faculty meeting awkward.

I yearn to be free. I dream of someday walking unencumbered, like a normal person. Maybe in retirement, I will amble without restraint in the glory of my declining years. Until, then, I will try to bear these burdens gracefully. But, should I fail, and you hear me complaining, I pray you’ll indulge me seeing as telling you about the misery of carrying so much is, for now, my only chance to unload.