I had a job as a hotel nanny in Hawaii for a while. It was awesome. I was Maui Poppins. My company worked all of the big resorts. Mostly it was an evening gig, where I had to hang out with tiny strangers in a hotel room for a few hours while mom and dad went to dinner and a show. The problem with hotel rooms is there’s not much to do in there besides bounce on the bed and watch TV. Now I’ve got no objection to gymnastics practice, but I feel like a failure when my charges are compelled to resort to passive entertainment. So after a few weeks of making up games like “let’s put dozens of strips of toilet paper up on the fan and then turn it on and see how many we can catch in the air”, I started bringing a bag of tricks and toys along with me on my visitations. The contents got use-tested and refined over time, and eventually I got it down to a tight collection of classic hits.

Years later, I started serving as ground control so often that I was inspired to use the same magic carpet bag to hold a travel kit for trippers. I like to leave it packed in the closet so I can just grab it when a play date develops at the last minute or I get a late night phone call from an addled friend who wants me to come peel him off of the ceiling. Tastes and styles vary of course, but I figured I’d dump it out on the floor here and show you what I’ve got. Maybe it will inspire you to put together a psychedelic emergence (not to say emergency) kit of your own. In no particular order: