“Baggage”

Ok folks, it’s 2012. Gone with 2011, there are should-be-abandoned terms like “at the end of the day”, or “it is what it is”.  Along that train of thought, let’s quit dismissing people’s experiences as “baggage”. Wasn’t that first coined in what, the 70’s?  When you utilize the term “baggage”, you might as well be saying “I’m just not that interested in discussing what you did or said to make me feel insecure/angry/etc”: in effect, deflecting the fact that whatever was said, brought up YOUR “baggage”.  Ergo, since everyone has experiences, everyone has baggage.  (Everybody eats, so everybody poops? Great book.)

Talking about “baggage” says volumes more about the accuser than the target. In describing someone as “that chick has a lot of baggage”, you could be referring to any number of qualities about “that chick”. If “that chick” is over the age of  30 for instance, then yeah, more than likely, a lot of shit can go down in a life of a 30 year old anybody; some of which might not make “that chick” good company for you. Not her fault. Don’t be a stooge and take it personally. Someone might think you have a set of  damn Samsonite yourself. No, not fabulous Orla Kiely iconic cars print either.

It’s like telling someone to calm down when they are no where near flying off the handle (pet peeve), like telling a racist that they’re a racist (actually fun to do), telling a black girl she got an attitude (we know, we like it, we like it a lot), or calling out some dude with the very same term he uses far too liberally (beatch!).  May be true, but as an apostrophe to an argument? Look out for the rebuttal. Sa-wing! And upside yo head. That’s a phrase that’ll never go out of style…

So there.