Prompt: You are suddenly required to live out of a single duffel bag. What do you put in it? Why?
My bag contains five shirts, three pairs of jeans, a sweatshirt, daily changes of underwear, three pairs of socks, a pencil, a book, my cell phone charger, a picture of my Dad, my brother, and I, my journal, a pocketknife, and five hundred dollars of emergency cash that was sewed into the lining of the bag almost immediately after I got it.
I don't have to imagine what I would keep in a bag if I had to live out of it because I know the answer for a fact. This is my reality. I have lived this way since I was six months old.
The clothes are practical. Five shirts give me a different shirt to wear to school each day for one week. Kids will notice anyways a brave few will ask why you just keep wearing the same five shirts over and over again, but usually five shirts is just enough to fool them. As long as you don't stay in one place for very long, and we never do, then people don't have the time to learn to care about you enough to notice that kind of stuff. Jeans are even harder to notice people wearing again than shirts. The sweatshirt is for cold weather or rain or snow or sleet. My sweatshirt has been through a lot and it looks it but they're so expensive that we really can't justify purchasing a new one.
The book is never the same book. Growing up on the road is a unique experience, one I haven't seen replicated by any of the many varieties of ways that a person can be raised when they stay at home. None of my stationary friends knew about the places on the road where you can take a book from a little basket full of books and nobody expects you to do anything but leave a book in return. You can take a book and read it all the way through and then give it away so some other wanderer can take it. This week the book is, A Tale of Two Cities. Last week it was, The Hobbit. I once found a copy of Mein Kampf and then when I was done I exchanged it for The Interpretation of Dreams. I've read a lot of books by a lot of people talking about a lot of ideas in a lot of different ways. My favorite was and still is, The Jungle Book. I kept that book for nearly three months and my brother and I read it together over and over again. Eventually I exchanged it for something else, however, because when you live out of a bag you get used to giving things up that you'd like to hold onto and somehow it felt wrong not to put the book back in circulation for wanderers all over to take.
The picture of my Dad, my brother, and I is an old one and I guess that's probably why I keep it. It certainly doesn't take up very much room in the bag so my dad can't really argue against it and that might be another reason I keep it. I know my brother carries around a picture too but his picture has our mom in it. When times get really tough and Dean isn't sure what to do I know he takes the picture out. I think he tries to decide what she would do. I don't want our mother in the picture. She died when I was six months old. I don't remember her. Carrying around her picture would be weird. She was never part of the family I knew. I wish she had been. From what I gather from my dad and my brother, she was a wonderful person and a great mom. It would be a lie to carry her around like she meant something to me though and I have enough lies in my life without that one added on top.
The cash, the charger, and the knife all really serve the same purpose. They are there for protection, for the moment when things go wrong. For when I'm alone, afraid, and all that stands between me and the solution to whatever the problem is a lack of money, the threat of danger, or an inability to call for help. They're my back up plan. I've never had to use them. I've never actually seen the money. I've just always been raised to know that it'll be there if I need it. Travelling the way we do, there is always an element of danger. Sheer luck has made it so that I haven't had to use these items but it's only a matter of time before our luck fails and I have to use them and when I do, I'll be glad I packed them in my duffel bag.
All the things in my bag, I choose to put there. I made the decision to keep it with me no matter what, except for the journal. The journal is my dad's idea. I have one. He has one. My brother has one. They all look different. They were all purchased from different stores in different states at different times. Dad's, I think, was the cheapest but the binding is starting to wear after so long. Dean's was the most expensive but he paid for it himself. I remember Dad offering to buy him an average, everyday kind of journal and Dean chose instead to splurge on a leather-bound fancy thing with some kind of Native American design on it. Mine is black and basic and one of the few things I let my father buy for me. He picked it out, he wanted me to write in it, then he could buy it. Well, those were my feelings on the subject. Dean writes in his all the time and I imagine that he'll soon get to the point where he'll have to buy another journal because he ran out of room in the old one. I haven't even filled up half of mine but I only write in it when Dad tells me too and even then, only if he stays to watch and make sure I do it.
Living out of a duffel bag, I've never known anything different. Other people have whole rooms of stuff and closets for the things that don't fit into their rooms. It seems like a lot of space for one person. I imagine that one would need a lot of things to fill up all that space or the space would feel pretty empty. That's probably why people, normal people that is, they spend so much time and money working to get stuff. They just don't want to face all that emptiness. Maybe emptiness feels a lot like loneliness. If I'm accepted then I will pack up my duffel bag, say my goodbyes, and move in. I will come to the college and enter my new room and I will begin to fill it up with five shirts, three pairs of jeans, a sweatshirt, daily changes of underwear, three pairs of socks, a pencil, a book, my phone charger, a picture of my Dad, my brother, and I, a journal, a pocketknife, and five hundred dollars of emergency cash that was sewed into the lining of the bag almost immediately after I got it.