CRAZY BAG By Murphy Funkhouser

INTRO. Murphy comes on stage in blue jeans and braids. She is carrying one stylish suitcase. Sets it down SR and awkwardly acknowledges the audience. Exits. She returns with two suitcases, one in each hand. She sets them down, smiles sheepishly at the audience and gives a small wave. Exits. She re-enters with a larger than average wine bottle that she hides (unsuccessfully) behind her back. She crosses SL and sets it down with the other suitcases. Exits. Comes back on-stage with an arm-load: 4 suitcases stacked on top of each other. She stumbles and teeters trying to maintain both balance and decorum. Plops down the pile SR. Exits. She returns pushing an ENORMOUS pile of bags: suitcases, steamer trunks, carry-ons all on a rolling platform. She tries to push, pull, shoves it with her hip. Huffing, puffing and grunting. This should be quite the production. Finally it is all out center stage. She dusts off her hands. Sighs. Looks back at the audience. Yeah. (Indicating pile) So. I have a little baggage. Do you think it’s too much? Excessive? Do I have a baggage problem? I considered it a problem, the moment it appeared in my bed. That’s right. Woke up one morning, spooning a piece of my own baggage. (To ceiling) Hello, God? Last night? Before I went to sleep? I am pretty sure I specified hunk NOT trunk. (Back to audience) Not the first time we’ve had a communication problem. After I stopped fondling the trunk, I stepped out of bed. Into a carry-on. Went to brush my teeth? Ended up face down in a hat box! They were everywhere. Garment bags, wardrobes, trunks, vanity cases. On my dining room table…washing machine…TV… in the refrigerator. This wasn’t your ordinary, run of the mill baggage, folks. I reached for the American Tourister. It growled at me.

Ok, I know they called it a trip. I just never thought the flashbacks would actually involve luggage. I guess it’s possible I smoked a little baggage at some point. Those were crazy times. But, when it was still there the next day? And the next. And the next? And when it started breeding?? I never actually saw the Samsonite give birth. But, there were more little carry-ons every day. Soon I had more baggage than I could handle. I had more baggage than JFK International could handle. (Beat) Please. Please don’t. Please don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I prefer the term, well-traveled. The word baggage? Has two meanings. Luggage. Or. Impediment. How can one word mean both: You’re goin’ places. And. Honey. You aint going anywhere? When it isn’t going anywhere either. It follows me everywhere. I am losing my mind!!! (Pause) Actually, I already lost my mind. Or parts of it, anyway. The Day the Bags Fell. Out of here. (indicates head) The overhead compartment? Otherwise known as the Hippocampus. (Look back at bags) Apparently, I had a hungry, hungry hippocampus. For so long I had gone with the obvious solution. Ignore it. Only that was kind of like….plugging a leak in the Hoover Dam with a Chiclets. Nothing like a blonde with baggage. It’s gotta go somewhere! That somewhere? (Gestures to bags) Others seem to fly through life with nothing but a fanny pack… How did they do it?!

I went looking for the answer. Tried to get a man to carry it. (To man in audience) Excuse me, sir? My breasts may not be a handful…but my baggage certainly is. Who am I kidding? I don’t want to carry it! Why would anyone else? A friend suggested. "Murphy. Let Jesus carry your load". Holy crap! Will he?! Actually, there might not be such a burden had I not blown him off in the first place. (Sigh) I read about Enlightenment. Ooh. En-light-enment. Lighten? Lighten your load?? Bring it on! I studied Buddhism. And meditation. And yoga. (Murphy tries to twist herself into a truly awful yoga pose) Ok. So, it was a correspondence course. I thought it might be working…..until one of the trunks fell over and flattened me in downward facing dog. That wasn't it either. Maybe the solution wasn’t in the here and now? It was out there…somewhere. Floating in the cosmos. Baggage in Space! Went to a psychic. Found out. I was carrying all the baggage from my past lives too! Oh, and some really bad karma I picked up in life #13! I had cosmic problems not solutions. I know what the solution is. I have to do it. IT. I’d rather shove the bags back up my nose, but I have to. (After some struggle) I HAVE TO UNPACK! SURE, until I face it, I can't move forward in life. But, I also don't have to go BACK. You understand, right? There’s a reason we pack things away. Leave them hanging in the closet. In suspension of disbelief. This isn’t going to be pretty. It would be one thing if I could say someone had placed items in my bags without my knowledge. But I know what’s in there.

I have to do this, don’t I? I at least…have to look. And swallow whatever pride I have left. So here goes. (gulp) Will you help me? Will you stay? Even if it’s only out morbid curiosity? (Rallying the troops) Will you help me? YES? Are you positive? YES?! (Beat) Really? What is wrong with you?! (The Baggage growls as Murphy starts for it) Holy sh…! (Murphy runs SL and hides) (From around the corner) It’s ok, buddy. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to see what’s going on in there… (Murphy does a Rocky style jog in place. Breathing. Preparing) (To select audience member) Ok. You. Cover Me! I’m goin’ in! (Song: Theme from Mission Impossible) (Murphy holds her breath, covers her eyes…and goes for it…duck and roll.) BIRTH OF THE BAGGAGE (Murphy pulls a suitcase from the pile. Slowly opens it. When nothing terrible happens, she is pleasantly surprised and proceeds) Suitcase Number ONE. The Birth of the Baggage. (Blows off the dust. Peers inside) I have your pretty standard childhood baggage. Oh. Did I mention? I’m a preacher’s daughter.

A Southern Methodist preacher’s daughter. (Glances at bags) Your pretty standard Southern Methodist preacher’s daughter. (Out comes the American Flag) Your pretty standard Southern Methodist military preacher’s daughter. My father. The man who spit-shined his soul as often as his belt buckle. The most honorable man I ever knew. When I was six, he made me request a pardon from the Base Commander. For not returning a library book. (Out comes a crock-pot. Murphy opens and smells) My Mother. The woman whose crock pot stew would make Martha Stewart ashamed to peel her potatoes in public. A beautiful, strong woman who wore decorum and dignity with a strand of pearls. (Out come the pearls) Her pearls of wisdom, however, were more like a choker, on me. (wraps pearls around her neck and pulls tight) (Pull out shiny pair of black shoes) My parents met at a college with the motto: Bring ‘em in as heels, patch up their soles and send ‘em out in pairs!! My parents? Were a perfectly-matched pair of good Sunday, or Air Force issue, shoes. (Murphy slowly loses herself into the story at this point. She eventually closes the trunk and sits on it…) My formative years were spent in formation. Every day, at exactly 5:59 am, my father called revelries with, This is the Day the Lord Has Made or the Star Spangled Banner… (Dad Voice) Bringing the troops to soft-boiled eggs and hard-boiled Morning Prayer! I did have to try very hard to be a good little Onward Christian soldier. God and I? Well, let’s just say I didn’t always get his orders. It started when I got frizzy hair, chicken legs and teeth so bucked a communion wafer couldn’t get in. And don’t even get me started on the headgear! If a boy actually spoke to me? It was something along the lines of, “Hey Freak-houser! What kind of signals can you pick up with that thing?” God said I should turn the other cheek. Why? So it would look like I was trying to get better reception?? But, still, every Sunday, I sang in the choir. The wind whish-tling through my teeth. And faithfully lit the church candles. Even after my headgear caught on fire. I listened when my parents told me God had a very special plan for my life. One day, He would answer all my prayers and send someone who would love me forever and ever. Amen.

I would kiss them goodnight (kisses the shoes), climb into bed, after cranking back the retainer two more notches (with face drawn back) and pray they were right. But, in the middle of the night… I’d hear a whisper. (Murphy assumes a deep, smoky voice and saucy pose) You don’t buy that shit, right? (Murphy becomes excited. Searches the stage for the voice) It was her. (Murphy retrieves a life size version of herself wearing boots, fishnets and a rather saucy look from behind the bags.) My closet Heathen. I loved her. She was my first love and my first dysfunctional relationship. All in one. She let me “do things”. When I gave away all my toys to the church? She said I could keep the Sit and Spin, because it made me feel “funny”. We hid it under the bed together. And she let me take it out. Often. And every Sunday? Staring off into the stained glass, organ music thundering. The Heathen would whisper such deliciously naughty dreams in my ear, the chicken-legs would quiver! She said? One day? I could be… (Heathen) A topless dancer in high heels and sequined pasties in a Las Vegas burlesque show! (Murphy) WOW!!!! But, somehow….being topless in Vegas never came up during Daddy’s morning prayers for “God’s Guidance” in my life.