Strange Behaviour

Today on the bus home from town was a woman carrying a broom in a Wilkinson bag. Well, the head of the broom was in the bag, while the broom handle remained free from plastic constraint. I found this very amusing. The bag didn’t appear have a purpose other than to hide part of the broom (it was being carried by the handle rather than the bag, of course.) I’ve seen this before, and the only explanation I can think of is a psychological need to ‘excuse’ the lugging-around of a large and unwieldy item. The plastic bag seems defensively to say, “I just bought this, okay, and I’m taking it home; it’s not like I’m just carrying it around for no good reason.” I’m an installation artist; in the last term I’ve taken more than my share of strange objects on the bus: two clothes horses, several big plastic boxes, buckets, rolls of carpet, carpet inner-tubes two-and-a-half meters long…the list goes on. I did get odd looks from people. Sometimes I’ve wished I could have an ‘Art Student’ badge to excuse my behaviour. It’s funny that anyone should feel daft or defensive about doing something that they know is perfectly reasonable!