Travel Companion

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
~ Alice and the Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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For a long time, I have wanted to have something to take pictures with on my travels.  I suspect this started when I saw Amalie.  I (and the rest of the entire universe) loved it when she sent her father's gnome travelling.

As a part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I met people who had been doing this for years.  One of them has a sock monkey who actually has his own Facebook page.  Another has a laminated cut out of her high school's mascot.  I started thinking about it again when I saw theirs, but I couldn't find anything that was small enough not to be a nuisance.  I know enough about myself as a traveler to know that if it's a hassle, I'm not going to fool with it.  I considered several items - a small beanie of our school mascot, an exceedingly tiny and grumpy sock monkey, a small blue owl someone gave me - but none of them seemed right.

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher buddy of mine started putting up pictures of a tiny finger puppet of Vincent Van Gogh she'd gotten at a museum.  I had a forehead-smacking moment when I saw it.  I actually have the William Shakespeare from that same series.  I bought it at the Frazier Museum in Louisville the first year I read for the AP test.  It's been guarding my Diet Mt. Dew in my classroom since that summer.

However, I didn't want to travel with Will.  I have so many things that are Shakespeare.  I love him.  I just didn't want to travel with him.  I looked over the line of the puppets from the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild for another option. They're all so cute and funny that the kid in me wanted all of them.  The adult in charge of the checkbook managed to limit that other aspect to purchasing two:  the Cheshire Cat and Emily Dickinson.

I got Chessy today.  I am pretty positive that he will be the one I travel with.  The quote at the top is most of the reason why, but there are other quotes that fit every long journey I've ever been on.  The one that springs to mind is the famous:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here."

As anybody who has ever traveled knows, there comes a point (maybe the exact moment you break out the suitcases) that this quote becomes painfully true....

I also like Chessy because he's a cat. That fits in with many things, the real-life furry beasts sleeping on my furniture that I miss when I'm travelling, the mankei neko I collected in Japan, the mascot of my school.  Cats are also good travel buddies because they remind you to be curious, to dress simply but with elegance, to enjoy any and all luxuries that come your way, and to sniff at unfamiliar things (possibly also while smacking them lightly with your paw) before accepting them.

It's a silly little thing, but I am looking forward to taking Chessie with me to Turkey.  If I can get a picture of him inside the Hagia Sofia, then that's going to be a very good thing.