Burdens of the Modern Beast

Cultural historian Thomas Hine, author of "I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers," says he has noticed that we are carting around more things than ever.

"Just last weekend," says Hine, who lives in Philadelphia, "I helped a friend pick out a rather elaborate laptop case that also included special compartments for cell phone, personal organizer, MP3 player and other devices nobody had heard of a dozen years ago."

The increased quantity of carry-on items for our flight through life, he says, reflects "the tendency of our society to dispense with sources of shared stability -- the long-term job, neighborhoods, unions, family dinners -- and transform us into autonomous free agents."

The Walkman, introduced in 1979, Hine says in an e-mail, "probably set the precedent; it allowed people to be physically in a space, but mentally detached. The plethora of 'communications' devices we carry are also tools of isolation from the immediate environment. And, in the words of the recruiting ad, we each become 'an army of one' carrying all our tools of survival through a presumably hostile world."

It's the perfect posture for the Age of Insecurity. We fret about our jobs, families, country, manhood or womanhood, ability to be a good parent. We believe someone is out to get us. And to get our things. So, like the homeless, we carry our stuff with us. Just in case something, or anything, happens.

If wealth is judged by freedom and freedom is the state of being unencumbered, then we are a poor and burdened people.

"We are carrying more stuff," says Celeste Niebergall of California-based JanSport, makers of backpacks. "Especially in school." Reams of stories have been written about children being injured by heavy backpacks. Now they tow large suitcases on wheels. They look like so many little flight attendants. Or weekend golfers with pull carts. Can motorized backpack carts be far behind?

Backpacks for all ages have been enlarged, Niebergall says: "We have increased capacity."

Larger knapsacks, multipocketed cargo pants, nylon slings, commuter bags, purses of all kinds -- shoppers, flaps, totes. Gap even makes a purse called a hobo for the urban nomad. PurseBrite was designed with a light inside to help you paw through your pile of possessions.

"I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece," Elizabeth Wurtzel writes in "Prozac Nation." "I want all my important possessions, my worldly goods, with me at all times. I want to hold what little sense of home I have left with me always. I feel so heavy all the time, so burdened. This must be a little bit like what it's like to be a bag lady, to drag your feet here, there, and everywhere, nowhere at all."

The bag lady does carry a lot of stuff. Traditionally, so does the soldier, a one-man band, the Avon Lady. And now all of us have increased our portable effects, if not our effectiveness.

Douglass seems pretty effective. She has been teaching for 25 years. As she loads her things into her Honda, which is parked on the street behind the school, she takes inventory. "Everyone else has a Palm Pilot," she says, laughing. "I still have a calendar."

Piece by piece she removes bags from her arms and hands. The files and the contact lens equipment and even the Jolly Ranchers we understand. But why does she carry a tennis racket? Is she going to play a match?

No, she says. She is not. But when life becomes too overwhelming, she takes the racket from the case and the ball from the pink Lancome sack and she bangs the ball against a wall. Again and again.

The mindless activity serves two purposes. For one thing, it clears her head. For another, it forces her to set down everything else she has been carrying.