Thoughts on purses

Why do we carry purses ladies? Just think about it. WHY do we saddle ourselves with one of those things? Because our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers before us carried one? Because we feel an innate need to carry everything but the kitchen sink around with us on the off chance that we will actually need it?

I hate my bag! Yes I said HATE. I absolutely, positively HATE my purse. Now if you are one of those women that just can't live unless you have the latest fashion purse or has to be color co-ordinated with your outfit, stop reading right this moment. This is not going to be a pretty tome. I am writing this for all those women that realize that they are bad at bags. They understand that their bag is a reflection of their bad housekeeping, hopeless disorganization, their chronic inability to throw anything away and their absolute failure to have a bag that matches each and every article of clothing they might own!

This is for the woman whose bag is full of squashed, vintage candy bars, loose 'curiously strong' mints covered in God only knows where the lint came from! This is dedicated to woman that has tubes of lipstick with no tops, melted Chap Stick of unknown vintage and half drunk bottles of water. This is for the woman that has wadded up bunches of Kleenex in her bag and you are not quite sure it was used or not. Eeeewwww! But it comes in handy when you run into that roadside rest stop and there is not a smidgen of toilet paper to be found!
There are scratched reading glasses, leaky ballpoint pins, crumpled and torn loose checks from the checkbook and that extra toothbrush that I think might have been used to scrub the bathroom tile with at one time from the looks of it.

I am one of those women that is still carrying a 'winter bag' in July while everyone else is carrying those darling little Vera Bradley cloth bags flashing a profusion of summery colors for all to see! I am no good at bags! I don't give a hoot if I am still carrying a straw bag in the winter snow. I don't care if I carry leather in the summer. I am no good at bags. After my mastectomy I could not carry a bag so I decided it was time to downsize. I got a cute little organized one and proceeded to throw out the trash. I found a flashlight I thought I had lost, $75 in loose change (I kid you not! The purse had a lining that was worn thru and the loose change had been slipping in there for years!) my bank debit card that I thought was lost, an extra pair of comfy slippers and a pair of panties (haven't got a clue!), a cosmetic bag that I forgot to zip so it was not only nasty, it was empty, 3 rosaries that were knotted together and it took a lot of prayer to separate them, the kids report cards for 3 years, the keys to my house, my moms house and a business I had closed down 8 years earlier and a book that I was reading. I could have fled a nuclear holocaust with what I had in that bag.

So I downsized for a while, but little by little things start creeping up on me. Pretty soon I found myself slipping that cute little organized lightweight bag into a larger bag and then a larger bag and then a suitcase!! I finally have found the answer to my problem tho. I don't give a rip what people think about my purse now. I found just the right thing for me. Its a back pack. And I do clean it out pretty regularly. I throw in my wallet with all the necessary papers that I need, a chapstick, my cell phone, a bottle of water, and my big heavy key ring. I don't care that its not fashionable or cute or cost less that 12 dollars at the local Wal-Mart. Its functional, its waterproof, its disposable. Its not a Prada, or a Dunne Bourke, or a Vera Bradley or any other high dollar high profile bag. Its just a bag. It reflects me, it doesn't have a style therefore it can't go out of style!

Oh I still have my cute little evening bags that I use about twice a year that are only good for holding a tube of lipstick that I never use. But the rest of the year, I am perfectly content with my plain Jane, utilitarian bag.