Friday, August 13, 2004
The Era of the Fresh Sack
Today I got me some great sack service, and it’s about damn time. That is to say, I’ll been letting my sack slide for some time and I wore the poor thing out. And by “letting my sack slide,” I mean that I’ve been setting my bike messenger bag on the floor of the bus and sort of scootching it along with my feet as I adjust my position to the ebb and flow of the other passengers. Three years of this and my fabulous sack had bitten enough dust - it gave up and split apart. For the past few weeks I’ve been using a backpack, which once used to be my portmanteau of choice but now seems hopelessly disorganized and inconvenient. Too many zippers! Too many dark recesses! Too hard to tote it around unless it’s riding my back! Yes, these are complaints many of us have about many things, some of which may even be luggage-related. I can’t help you with those problems anymore. Mine have been solved.
Here’s a shameless corporate plug: Timbuk2 gives good sack. They make a sturdy product, they permit a lot of personalization, and the turn-around time will make your head spin - I submitted my custom order two days ago and in less than 48 hours I had a fresh sack, resplendent in ballistic nylon, a vision in dark green, black and grey - the colors of my heart, if you will. For the price, it can’t be beat, and I’m sure this sack will wind up carrying memories as important to me as the old one.
That old sack… we had some good times together. It bears a wine-stain from a great dinner party, a little tear from a memorable moment of clumsiness… but one sad morning I looked into my sack and saw the floor beneath it. It was finished, having been rendered impotent and unsuited for its intended purposes. When I emptied it out, caused it to disgorge its contents all over the bedspread, that’s when the trip down memory lane really started. It gave me a renewed perspective on myself. How’s that, you ask? Well, inside that mysterious sack, I found:
* Generic lipbalm
* 2 generic cold/severe congestion caplets (in blisterpack)
* Tailings of a small post-it pad
* Single AA battery
* SEIU local 535 stickpin
* Three quarters; five dimes; three pennies
* Gumby & Friends fold-n-mail stationary pad
* Metal ball-chain for ID card
* Plastic card-holder from a wallet, with five cards in it.
This last item was given to me for some reason when I went to Ohio to bury my grandfather two years or so ago and I’d been carrying it around with me in my sack ever since, though I was never clear as to why. The cards were:
* Medicare card (issued 1974)
* Equitable health insurance card (undated)
* 01-02 Elks Club Life Membership card with a maroon “Member 52 years” sticker
* Ohio Identification Card with a “Restriction - Non-Driver” notation, issued on a specified date in 1995, listing a date of birth exactly 86 years and one day prior, with the optional social security number included (grandpa inscribed his SS number on everything he owned, especially metal objects, using a special gadget he’d gotten just for that purpose), listing hair as “wht” and eyes as “bro” and height as 5’ 6” (which seems way too short) and weight as 317 pounds (which was definitely at least 100 pounds too heavy)
* Social Security Act Account Card with his SS number printed on it with big loopy serifed numbers, official printer’s work, and his name typed in at a slight angle, issued 12-7-36 (my father’s birthday).
Every card has the exact same signature - in some cases smooth and confident, in some cases shaky and fading, but all of them were Jerry’s hand and mark, I noticed as I laid them all out on the defunct sack for examination. Then I threw them all away, except for the social security card; I stuffed them in the old sack and let the four winds blow them safely home.
Now I have a new sack to fill with a variety of random objects I brought with me today to work or that I acquired over the course of the day - a short book by Italo Calvino, a bus schedule and muni map, a pack of cd-r’s, a cool squishy pillow, a box of syringes for the cat, my day planner, my notebook in which I inventoried the contents of the old sack… It’s time for yet another new era to start - the era of the fresh sack. Still pert and sassy, and it looks so sporty in the locker room. Our future together looks bright. Wish us luck.
