Sure, it’s been said that you can tell a lot about a woman by
the make-up she uses and the clothes she wears, but I think you can
never really know a woman until you see what’s inside her purse.
Take mine, for example.
Sure, it’s been said that you can tell a lot about a woman by the make-up she uses and the clothes she wears, but I think you can never really know a woman until you see what’s inside her purse. Take mine, for example. Judging by the designer-ish looking outside, you’d never suspect inside is a petrified pacifier dating back to the Clinton years, a foil packet of lowfat mayonnaise stolen (uh, I mean “left over”) from the local sandwich shop, and someone’s old gum wrapped in a Kleenex. Now how, exactly, can this happen to someone who organizes her shoe collection by height, you ask? It happens because I’m what you’d call A Compulsive Purse Stuffer. Or, in less philosophical circles “A Big, Fat Purse Toting Pack Rat.”
If you ask me, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this: I’m not disturbed, I’m prepared. I mean, what if I’m, say, walking to my car in the supermarket parking lot and a bomb falls out of the sky and lands in my cart? I could open my purse, whip out a baggie of cotton balls and tweezers, and diffuse it. Or what if I was shoe shopping in the mall and stabbed by, say, a really, really pointy Manolo pump? Then I could make a handy little tourniquet out of my rubber bands and extra twist ties to stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrives.
Oh, all right. So maybe I never really need the things I hoard in my purse. But, that particular fact doesn’t seem to stop me. Instead I just buy bigger purses. When they hit, oh say, ten pounds, I get what I call an “addition.” Which is a sort of sub-purse that you can use to carry your wallet and car keys since now your main purse, aka: “The Mother Ship,” is now too full. This, of course, works until that purse is filled up too, and then you have to move on to another sub-purse. This vicious cycle continues until suddenly you have about fifteen bazillion purses in play at once. Which, everyone knows, is way too many to keep track of, so you finally give up and take them all to Goodwill, and start over again.
Oh sure, I could do something really silly and-ha ha-clean out my purse. But that would be too easy. Besides, there is clear organization here. For instance, you can sort the contents into three categories.
First, there’s the stuff in the “Just in Case I Need to Rebuild the Car” category: a tire gauge, two screwdrivers, electrical tape, and safety pins.
Followed by the “Everything I Need to Survive In Case I’m Stranded on a Deserted Island or in the Car with Kids” grouping: band-aids, ear plugs, cotton balls, loose tic tacs, a deck of cards, crackers from the salad bar, a trashy romance novel and a bottle of cheap wine. (Ha! Ha! Just kidding about the last one. Sort of.)
And then the things that “I Just Lug Around Because There’s Nowhere Else to Put Them” section: pictures of my teenage kids as infants, someone’s folded up kindergarten report card from 1998, a faded movie ticket stub, a lanyard my kids made one year at camp, and my old college ID card in case I ever need proof I was once young and skinny.
I ask you, how can I get rid of things like that?
Now some of you out there are probably thinking that this is just a flimsy excuse not to clean out my purse. And maybe it is. SO WHAT?
Truth be told, I like that my purse is the Louie Vitton equivalent of a junk drawer. It makes me feel safe and secure. Besides what if one day someone comes up to me and asks for, say, a mint? Or a can opener? Or a red Barbie shoe? I’ll have it and voila! I’ll. Be. Vindicated. (Insert immature gloating here)
Impossible you say? No. Highly unlikely? Yep. Pathetic? Sure.
But trust me, we Compulsive Purse Toting Pack Rats live for this sort of stuff.
