The type of luggage you carry says a lot about you. For example, if you’re carrying somebody else’s luggage, it says you’re a thief.

No, seriously, luggage is important, which is why most frequent travelers spend their entire lives looking for Exactly the Right Piece of Luggage, the one that is nice and compact but holds a lot of stuff. This is a waste of time, of course, because the truth is that a piece of luggage is nothing but a bag or a box with a handle on it, and under the laws of physics, which are strictly enforced in luggage, the size of the bag or the box determines how much it will hold, as can be seen in the following chart:

Size Of Luggage Unit Amount Of Stuff Luggage Unit Will Hold

Small Small amount

Medium Medium amount

Large Large amounts But still not enough

The infrequent traveler generally accepts these limitations and purchases one of those enormous, hard-sided suitcases that have wheels and weigh about 87 pounds even when they’re empty. But your frequent traveler never abandons the quest to find a miracle luggage unit that can hold more than it can actually hold. Over the course of a lifetime the frequent traveler will purchase dozens of luggage units, frequently from advertisements in airline in-flight magazines. You’ve probably seen the advertisements. There’s a picture of what appears to be an ordinary carry-on suitcase, underneath which are about 70,000 words, which begin:

AMAZING LUGGAGE BREAKTHROUGH!

A recent scientific discovery by researchers at the Stanford University School of Luggage Science has made possible the REVOLUTIONARY new Laser 300OX Total Carry-on Wardrobe Unit! Although smaller than a standard clarinet case, this incredible unit, thanks to advanced luggage technology, can easily hold: Eight men’s suits OR 14

women’s full-length evening gowns PLUS All the shirts, socks, ties, underwear, and clothing accessories you would need for two terms in Congress PLUS All your toiletries

PLUS An actual working toilet And that’s not all! How many times have you said to yourself, as a busy business traveler: “Why can’t they design a carry-on bag with a space for my tennis rackets, golf clubs, skis, and volleyball equipment?” Well, look no farther, because the Laser 300OX ...

And so on. Ordinarily you would take one look at this kind of advertisement and say, hey, get serious. But in the airplane environment, where you have nothing else to do except watch the movie, (Rocky XVII, the one where he has surgery so his eyelids can open all the way) you find yourself reading all the way through it, and by the time you’re on your third Bloody Mary, and you’ve reached the part where the advertisement claims that this suitcase will do your tax returns for you, you’re thinking, “Hey! This could be the answer to my luggage needs!” So you whip out your Visa or MasterCard and fill out the order form, and six to ten weeks later you receive: a bag with a handle. A small bag with a handle. Which, if you really pack it right, will hold two pairs of socks PLUS your dental floss. I know what I’m talking about! I have seventeen of these things!

Federal Airline Administration regulations state that each passenger may have up to 17,000 pounds of carry-on luggage provided that he or she can jam it all into the overhead baggage compartment. I am a veteran traveler, but I am still amazed at how much stuff some people will try to get up there. Entire households, sometimes. These people are always directly in front of me. “What do you mean, I can’t carry this on?!” they’ll say to the airline personnel. “I ALWAYS carry this on!”

“Sir,” the airline personnel will say, “that’s a lawn tractor.

“But look!” the person will say. “It fits in the overhead baggage compartment!” And the person will actually attempt to shove it in there, which is of course impossible because (a) the tractor is too large, and (b) the compartment already contains some other passenger’s upright piano. But this will not stop the person from trying. No human emotion is more powerful than the grim determination of an airline passenger attempting to shove an inappropriate object into the overhead baggage compartment.

There are two major schools of thought on how to pack for traveling. These are known technically as “my school” and “my wife’s school.” My school of packing is that you should never carry more things than you can fit into a standard sandwich bag. This way you never put yourself in a position where you have to turn your belongings over to a commercial airline’s crack Luggage Hiding Department (traces of airline luggage have been found on Mars). So I travel very light, and I’ve found that this is really not a problem, once I get adjusted to the stench resulting from wearing the same shirts and socks and, of course, underwear for as long as two weeks running. The advantage of this is that I get plenty of room to stretch out on airplanes, because nobody will sit near me. The disadvantage is that the flight attendants also stay away, preferring to serve my dinner entree by flipping it at me Frisbee-style from as far as 25 feet away, and some of those airline entrees are hard enough to kill a person (Such as lasagna).

My wife, on the other hand, would not think of leaving the house for even a half hour without sufficient possessions in her purse alone to establish a comfortable wilderness homestead. So when we travel, she packs many, many items. She buys these giant suitcases, manufactured by shipbuilders, and she packs them with items for every conceivable contingency. Like, if we’re going someplace in the tropics, she’ll naturally pack an entire set of lightweight outfits, but she’ll also pack an entire set of medium-weight outfits, in case we have a cool snap; and a set of heavy outfits, in case we get locked inside a meat freezer; and a waffle iron, in case we get hungry for waffles while we’re in there; and so on. So we generally arrive at the airport with virtually all of our worldly possessions, looking like Cambodian refugees, except that we appear to be actually taking Cambodia with us. Our carry-on luggage alone is enough to prevent many planes from ever leaving the ground. They’ll taxi down the runway, gaining speed, then, after a violent grunting effort to take off, they’ll continue right on taxiing, sometimes right into a harbor. This doesn’t worry us, however, because my wife always brings plenty of scuba equipment.

Lay the suit on its back on a flat surface such as a tennis court. Take the sleeves and place them at the side. Take the left sleeve and place it on the suit’s hip, and hold the right sleeve over the suit’s head as though the suit is waving in a jaunty manner. Now put both sleeves straight up over the suit’s head and shout, “Touchdown!” Ha ha! Isn’t this fun? You may feel stupid, but trust me, you’re not half as stupid as the people who think they can fold a suit so it won’t come out wrinkled.