The Excess Baggage idea was brought home to me some years ago when one of my Mysteries required a very large amount of baggage requiring huge sums of money to be paid for excess each time we moved to a new location.
Sizing matters up I came to the conclusion that I was giving myself unnecessary work, worry, and expense, because this particular Mystery, although it require an unusual amount of energy on my part, seemed to be less appreciated by the audiences than tricks that were much easier to perform and required no excess baggage.
Since then I have applied the “Excess Baggage” idea to many situations in my life, with satisfactory results. I feel that I may be helping my listeners by passing the idea on to them.
Do not get the idea that I am posing as a Wowser [references here and here] when I talk about Excess Baggage in connection with intoxicating liquor, or booze, as you call it in Australia and New Zealand. Many a man and many a woman needs for physical and psychological reasons the wholesome brewed and fermented beverages that you know how to make to perfection in your Southern Countries. Some need more than others, more often than others, but a man or woman who makes “excess baggage” of these drinks is simply storing up trouble and inviting misery. There is a simple test that anyone can make. When any muddling of the mind takes place, whether from drink or any other excess, stop the thing that causes the muddling. I do not believe that Australians and New Zealanders haven’t got control. Their War record and their Sport record show real control written all over them.
Another line of “excess baggage” we are likely to carry is “the fragrant weed,” tobacco. Tobacco carries a mild narcotic that has proved a boon to millions, yet carried to excess this narcotic can be a poisonous irritant. Here again control is the key of the situation. The Wowser would banish a real boon where that is necessary but it is for us to learn to be master of the situation.
Then there is the “Excess Baggage” of foul and dirty language. Do not get the idea that I am opposed to swearing. A good wholehearted swear at the right time has saved a life. I am sure that everyone knows how to swear and nobody ever accused anyone of being incapable of using descriptive language, but my hat goes off to both Australians and New Zealanders because with very few exceptions they swear like gentlemen. That is, they swear at situations and not at individuals. When we swear at a situation that is making us miserable, we often blow off steam that hurts nobody and relieves the tension, but when we swear at somebody, we are just storing up an accumulation of “excess baggage” in the form of hatred, resentment and personal antagonism, that is often hard to be rid of.
David Devant, that master of Magic, was a man who never learned to swear. He became in his later years a paralytic and one night had the unspeakably horrible experience of seeing his wife fall into the fire and being unable to move hand or foot to save her being burned to death. His life-long habit of repression, nothing more nor less than “excess baggage,” held him down at this critical time and tense as he was in the horror of the thing he could not even yell for the help that may have saved her life. His comment on the tragedy was simply this, “O if I had only learned to swear!”
So I ask us all to be tolerant of the other fellow’s habits and I shall not feel that my time here tonight has been wasted or that my journey through life has been without result, if I can get us to say to the fellow who is a bit “over the fence” in booze or in cuss words or in something else, “Look, old man, aren’t you carrying a little ‘Excess Baggage’?” And let us smile when we say it!
We might introduce a new word into our vocabulary. Let us be “Bowsers” instead of “Wowsers,” supplying our fellow man freely with the good juice of fellowship and helping to lighten his load, especially when he is struggling along with a bit of “Excess Baggage.”