Dear Friends,
Baggage. Why do people have so much of it? Every day in New York City, I walk to and from work and see, five, maybe ten people dragging suitcases. I don’t mean laptop cases because you have scoliosis or something (G-d forbid), I mean, big, honkin’ Samsonite pieces of luggage. First of all: Samsonite? Really? I thought that brand peaked in 1991 when “Dumb & Dumber” plugged them. Haven’t seen much from them since. Secondly: we have these vehicles all over the city called Cabs (pronounced phonetically “K-aaaa-b-s”). This is how you can get from Point A to Point B without tripping me in my stilettos on the way to work, or forcing me to spill my coffee through the cheap lids that the coffee men in New York hand-out thinking you don’t notice that these lids are cheap, and that coffee will periodically spill out of the miniscule opening and onto your coat or scarf in thirty seconds or less. Or if you’re me, it will spill all over the silk sleeve of your favorite Rebecca Taylor coat, that’s beige, mind you. If those coffee carts ever stayed in one place, I’d hand one of the guys my dry cleaning bill. But of course, they keep moving around, never setting up on the same street corner probably because they know they would have a line up of at least twelve people with dry cleaning tickets demanding free lid-less coffee for their traumatic, emotional and garment-al damages. The coffee cart men are no different than the people with luggage tramping through the city – they’re always moving so you can’t hold them accountable for anything. Kind of like men, but I won’t go there today.
As I was pondering the sheer amount of physical baggage that New Yorkers carry around each day (or even more frightening – tourists), I realized something. If physical baggage is running rampant through the city, I wonder how much emotional baggage weaves its way through the crowds as well. For many people, baggage is the tension in their shoulders, the cramp in their neck, the ache in their stomach. For others, baggage is what they blog about (I am the living example of this), or cry about, or have anxiety attacks over. But, I guess for everyone else, they just drag Samsonites through New York City, ignoring the heavy weight they are lugging with them in the Big Apple.
Speaking of the Big Apple, I was watching “When Harry Met Sally” this past weekend (god bless Nora Ephron) and I feel as though I’ve already slept with Harry. I feel like we’ve dated. In fact, I feel like I know him so well, he seems more like a Barry or a Ben to me. I feel like he’s already ignored our sexual chemistry, and after Sally, just moved onto me. There’s this great line in the end when Harry (or Barry or Ben) is in the middle of professing his love to Sally, and “Auld Lang Syne” comes on and he goes, “What does this song even mean?” It’s as if Larry David came in and took over his romantic gesture. It’s a lot like how I feel when I see the people with the baggage on the streets, or at a bar – physical or emotional – people need to deal with their baggage. Harry clearly didn’t deal with his – he had to interrupt a love scene to go off on a tangent.
The biggest reason why I resent these people who carry luggage is that they distract me from my thoughts. Sometimes I just want to stroll through the streets, carrying a cup of coffee, taking in the sights, potentially wearing my beige coat, without having to worry about dodging these people with Samsonites. But, at least these people are upfront about their baggage – it’s rolling right behind them. What about all of the others whose baggage is hiding in the furrow in their brow, or in the back of their minds? They should just shove it all in a big, honkin’ Samsonite and throw it in the Hudson.
Kisses,
Jessica
