Luggage

It is a blue Jordache suitcase with a leathery-wrangleresque handle and nylon sides and wheels  and it is 80 dollars down from 150 at Sears in downtown Peoria and Grandma is asking me if I like it. It is the blue suitcase and it is larger than our Zenith television in the living room. It is the blue suitcase which the skinny-tie sales clerk has already informed us is top of the line, crème de la crème, optimal for international travel. It is the blue suitcase which I will pack with  jeans and underwear and my running shoes, clothes that will be scrupulously assayed and configured in economical heaps to save room, sweaters folded like mortar boards. It is the suitcase and Grandma has already told me twice that if I don't like it we can always go somewhere else.

The suitcase if expensive. I don't want my grandmother to spend this much money on me.


Grandma tells me to make sure when I pack it in Peoria the first time to leave lots of room for all the souvenirs I want to bring back home.

 I don't want my grandmother to spend this much money on me.

Grandma tells me that I need something to take with me. I need a square-shaped tote to stow provisions and toiletries. I wonder if my ubiquitous silo-shaped can of Aqua Net will be usurped in customs. It is the wheeled trolley that I will plant my life attire inside of that will be cached in vector of the plane roaring 4-miles over the icy swills of the Atlantic ocean, the suitcase I will wait around a carousel bin and fetch finding myself


You need a suitcase, my grandmother says to me.

When I ask grandma what she wants me to bring her back from England she tells me nothing. She tells me that Grandma just wants me to have a goof trip.

Grandma always refers to herself in the third person as grandma.

 

I pick up the suitcase by its leathery lobe and proceed to checkout at Sears. As I am walking to the aisle I see Beano and his girlfriend Corrine. Beano who started the season as one of our top five cross country runners and then became insouciant. Beano who gained weight over the course of the season. Beano who just wouldn't leave my hotel room when we crashed in Mattoon and he shoved a picture of a poxed-riddled pudendum in my face and told me to lick it.


 I haven't seen Beano all semester.

Next to him is his girlfriend Corrine. She went to grade school with me  since third grade. She started dating Beano last year when she is in 8th grade. Corrine is 14 years old. She is three months pregnant.


Grandma asks me if there is anything else I need that could possible help me as I travel to another world.