To celebrate her eleventh birthday, my daughter Clementine and I took a trip to Edinburgh, a city that is essentially made up of hundreds of little pubs connected by long winding flights of stairs. Unfortunately, Clementine wasn’t allowed into any of the pubs (and for some reason wasn’t too keen on waiting outside for me while I “just had one–two at the most”), and so that left the exploring portion of our Edinburgh trip heavily slanted in favor of the stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. This is significant because it was during this trip that I discovered a curious facet of eleven-year-olds: despite the fact that they have been known to haul around book bags that are positively leaden with undelivered memos and half-eaten sandwiches–not to mention trick-or-treat bags the size and weight of a pony keg–they are, apparently, completely unable to carry a small suitcase farther than one inch before they are forced to fling it down and cry out despairingly: “I can’t carry it! It’s too heavy.” Which means, that in a city like Edinburgh, the other person (the one who is not eleven years old) will need to not only carry twice as much stuff as they need, but to carry it twice as far, as well.
Not that this phenomenon was limited to Edinburgh: we also visited Bath, a city in southern England that can trace its history back to the Romans. It was there that–after taking note of my stooped and shuffling gait as a result of my double burden–the tour guide (who was also playing the part of a Roman patrician) pointed to me and then said knowingly to Clementine: “And this must be your slave.”
By this time I was beginning to look at each new attraction we visited with a more and more jaundiced eye: the London Eye was “good” because it moved on its own and had benches; Stonehenge was “bad” because you had to walk to see it. (So what if it’s “more authentic” that way; I’m sure that the Druids–or whomever–would have been the first to welcome a better way to get around. In fact, that may be what Stonehenge represents: a request to the gods to hurry up and create some Segways.)
Finally, near the end of our trip, I decided that the £12 (about $25) a day excess luggage storage fee they were charging at the train station (and which had seemed outrageous to me when we had first arrived), was actually the wisest investment I would ever make. (And, considering the hundreds of dollars in chiropractor’s fees I would likely be saving, probably was.)
There was, however, one snag: the £12 charge was not only per day, but per partial day as well. This meant that every time you removed your luggage from storage you would be charged an additional £12. I did my best to convey this to Clementine as we sat sprawled out across the floor of the train station, rearranging “our” luggage into one manageable bag.
“Do you have everything you need? Everything?” I asked for the tenth time.
“Yes, yes, yes! I told you already. I have everything.”
“Ok, it’s just that it costs”–
“I know!”
Fifteen minutes (and another long staircase) later we stepped back out into the chilly Edinburgh day, considerably lighter both of luggage and (for me at least), of spirit. Or at least I was until Clementine turned to me and peevishly asked, “So, where’s my hat?”
On the bright side, I did manage to shed another 12 pounds.