Packing For The Trip Home
It’s a matter of some debate among social scientists as to what is the most inconsequential thing you can bring back from a vacation and still get by pretending it’s a gift for those you left behind on the home front.
We have inspiring examples in front of us of brave men coming back from industry gatherings, high level economic summits, and off-site strategy setting sessions who have survived the homecoming holding nothing in their hands but a single postage stamp from the host country.
Bravo!
We know one man who parleyed a single bag of peanuts liberated from the woman sleeping next to him on the plane into a gifting ceremony at the arrival gate not short in its joy and vividness of the emotions accompanying the holidays.
He was that good.
Others examples present a darker picture, and offer a warning to the unwary.
You should, for instance, never think that you can land at the home airfield, rush into the gift shop on the way to the baggage carousel where the family awaits, and buy a plate or mug from the shelves and pass it off as coming from the vacation site.
Such mugs and plates almost always carry a warm and welcoming message such as “Nothing But the Best in Cleveland,” which loses its emotional punch when it’s Cleveland you just landed in.
Passing this off as a piece of performance art or an ironic statement on the consumer culture, good luck there, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
People have been hardened these days by years of watching crime scene investigation serials on the television, and have learned the telltale signs of a liar in action. The sheen of moisture on your forehead, the slight throb of that vein along your neck, the way your eyes go all beady and dart around like they do. I think it’s going to be obvious.
As to palming off on the folks back home shirts you bought for yourself over there in VacationLand but which no longer fit due to two weeks of wining and dining, it’s a roll of the dice. I’ve seen it go both ways. Seems risky to me though.
If you travel overseas, foreign coins and bills, worthless now that you’re home, can be quickly redirected into the Gifts category.
They aren’t leftover currency, you see, they are tokens or emblems of the rich local color and sophisticated Continental settings you’ve been traversing.
I have to say, this is a lost generation when it comes to such niceties as politely accepting such brazen balderdash.
Like as not that innocent-looking child over there to the right will whip out a smart phone or a tablet computer and call up the dollar value of the coins and bills in your hands and ask if she can have that in US currency instead.
For all you know she has multiplied the sum twelvefold, you never were good with sums, but you meekly hand over your last remaining dollars anyway and call it a square deal. You know when you’ve been bested.
The local liquor or brew or batch-crafted whiskey that you tossed into your suitcase back at the hotel? Maybe. Maybe. But have a care.
These beverages somehow take on an elevated quality, a finer tone, an ethereal nature when you are under the Caribbean moon or sitting at a charming café along the Seine in Paris.
It’s a bit of a spiritual moment if you want to know the truth.
Everyone is so friendly! The men so cavalier, the women so charming! They seem to agree with everything you say and they tell you that you say it so well! And you have to admit…they might have something there. You seem to have a newfound eloquence, a way with words, as you wave your credit card around madly.
The very dirt is more emotionally satisfying here, the trash pickup and sewage treatment just short of enchanting, and if it came down to it, you’d guess that even heartbreak would be more absolute and more gratifying here. In fact, you might even get a novel out of it.
It strikes you, as you sip or swig or toss back your drink as the beverage dictates, that a man might very well live happily here as a waiter or a fry cook or a beggar while working on his novel, and by gosh, you might be just the man to pull it off.
Little matter that you haven’t written a word since the last hour of the last year of college. This place is so magical that anyone ought to be able to punch out a thousand pages or so.
Sip or swig or toss back as you consider this line of action. That will help clarify you thinking on this matter.
Sometimes though that magic just doesn’t translate to the domestic scene.
You offer to open the bottle for the friend you just presented it to, and the two of you stand there sipping the purple or maroon or mauve or beige liquid from a paper cup and you don’t get a sense of the Caribbean moon or the lapping of the Seine at all, you think more of a wind-blown-littered parking lot with grass growing between the cracks and the chain link fence all rusty, you think something a bit more like what you’d pour down the anthill of a colony of fire ants? And then light it? You think a strong petroleum finish as a connoisseur might say, with just a hint of lighter fluid among the tannin? As if the French words on the bottle, properly translated, might read Molekiller: For When Strychnine Just Isn’t Enough?
If we are to set at the left-hand side of the Spectrum of Gift Acceptability the airsickness bag from the seat pocket in front of you as way too little, and at the right-hand side a prized Lipizzaner stallion as way too much, we can agree that everything else in between is negotiable.
It poses a larger question, though: as you pack your bag for the final time for the flight home: what do you bring home at all, and what do you leave behind?
It’s common and accepted that you find your Eternal Soulmate at the yogurt station of The Captain’s Brunch on Monday morning of the cruise and that you marry on Tuesday afternoon in some charming island retreat.
That is an entire week by the time you get home, but it is still considered good form to wait for at least a week more to have the new spouse shipped your way. This differs with the culture however and of course shipping rates.
As to mysterious amulets or ancient carved stones or an eye carved of topaz pried from the image of a heathen idol, it’s always good to determine before you leave the island whether there is a primordial curse attached to the object or not. It might say so in fine print there on the back, but again it might not.
Avoid, I would say, rubbing these objects and making some foolish wish, or chanting tunelessly as you hold one aloft while down in the catacombs of the city.
If you get the urge that a bunch of you should use a Ouija Board while in the presence of one of these objects just to show everyone how foolish you think Ouija Boards are, that’s up to you, but I heard that now and again it might have a bad ending. That’s all I have to say about that.
On the same note, if you notice or suspect you are being tailed by an international gang of jewel thieves, a resurrected pack of Knight Templars from the wrong side of the railroad tracks, or a team of assassins descended from an ancient tribe who have sworn to kill anyone with your last name, those too are best left behind.
With a little intelligent packing, I think you can ensure that your trip home is safe, easy and affordable.
