Purseology

Many of us can say, unequivocally, that we are firmly attached to our purses. The strong, almost magnetic pull that these accessories have on us is remarkable. I've marveled over this phenomenon since I was a teen. It's almost like an umbilical cord that keeps us connected to who we are. They encapsulate our identity, yet are a highly personal and private thing. Anyone with proper manners knows it's taboo to enter the realm of someone else's purse. It's one of the first things we teach our toddlers: Stay out of Mom's purse! 

You'd think we'd remember our first purse and I do. It was a little red leatherette child's purse with pink-tutu'd ballerinas and rhinestones decorating the front. It disappeared from my life before I was six years old, as did many other childhood toys. There one day and gone the next.

But I don't remember when the actual utilitarian usage of purses entered my life. It must have been around seventh grade. I remember well the worn black leather bag handed down to twelve-year-old me by my sister. I also remember the beige Easter purse that had one of those hinged metal frames and a clasp that made a loud satisfying clack when you closed it. Mom always called them pocketbooks, never purses. By the way, a pocketbook is defined as a small, rectangular purse.

Also significant to my memory was a black shoulder strap bag given to me for Christmas in the eighth grade. Or was it brown? Either way, I felt so fashionable. Shoulder strap purses were the rage at the time. We hadn't seen many of those before Twiggy or Jean Shrimpton started sporting them on the pages of Vogue, Mademoiselle and Glamour. It was a sixties thing, like blue jeans, that happily never went away. 

I remember vividly a simple burgundy leather bucket bag I saw at Dillard's in Longview, TX.  I was so in love with that purse, I saved up for a while to get it. The leather was like 'buttah'! I'd never had a bag that expensive. It was $40.00! Sleek and so divinely elegant, it had 'Class' written all over it! It was the late seventies and I was only about 23 or 24 years old; I thought that was a lot of money for just a purse back then. I'd be interested in my reaction if I saw this same bag in a store today. Would I still be so smitten? I don't think so, but I loved it to pieces...literally.

Sadly, I don't remember any other specific purses beyond that point. They've come and gone in my life like so much flotsam and jetsam. But it's so intriguing how significant they are while you are using them. I simply cannot run off and go anywhere without my trusty purse. As long as I have my purse, I'll be ok.

Three times I've been robbed of my purse. The first time was in Anchorage, AK in 1975. It was summer, so the days were extraordinarily long. At 11 p.m. I was parking my car in the lot across from the Anchorage Westward Hotel in the heart of downtown. I was meeting my dear friend Teresa who worked as a switchboard operator at the hotel. Though it was late, it was still broad daylight, like late afternoon. As I locked my car and headed across the lot, a guy who was walking down the sidewalk cut in between the cars and headed my way. He walked past me, then stopped and asked if I knew the time. An old gambit obviously, but I was only 21 and naive. As I turned my wrist to check the time, he grabbed the purse dangling from that arm. But I hung on for dear life. It was like a slow motion tug of war. When I started yelling for help, he drew back a fist, punched me in the face and off he ran with my bag. The police were called, witnesses questioned, but I knew that purse was gone forever. Strangely, a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from a man who asked me if I was Leslie and said he had my purse. If I'd meet him, he'd give it to me. Alarmed and suspicious, I called the police and they sent an officer over to escort me to the meeting. Turned out, the man was a well-known local attorney who had just evicted a group of young people out of an apartment he owned. He told us he'd seen the purse inside the apartment earlier and after the group had left, he found it thrown under a bush outside. My info was in it so he called me. Almost nothing was missing! Just whatever small change I'd had on me at the time.

The second time happened in Arlington, TX in the mid-eighties. Newly divorced, I was renting an apartment which had a sliding glass door to the patio. When I finished getting ready for work one morning, I grabbed my car keys off the kitchen counter and turned to get my purse off the rocking chair where I always left it. It wasn't there. Then I noticed the drapes in front of the sliding door were moving in the breeze. I went over and pulled them back to discover the door had been jimmied and was wide open. Chilled with fear, I called the police but they were positive there was nothing that could be done. My young children were in the apartment with me when this break-in occurred; my daughter was only a baby still sleeping in a crib! It could have been so much worse! I was scared and really felt violated. What's very odd, is that again a few weeks later, I got a phone call from a guy saying he found my purse, this time in the middle of the road. He brought it to my workplace and again, there was very little missing. 

The third time was in Elkhart in 2012. As you know, I love thrift shopping and I'd found a very funky, artsy, tapestry purse at the local Goodwill. I couldn't see myself using it as intended but thought it would make a great lunch bag. I was using the company's black Yukon as transportation and I'd left that purse in the vehicle one night. When I unlocked the car the next morning, it was to find broken glass all over the front of the vehicle from the passenger side window. And that bag was missing. It must have been a great disappointment for the thieves to open it expecting to find credit cards or money but instead finding dirty tupperware that needed washing out. And weirdly enough, the cops found that purse, too, flung into a neighbor's back yard. I'm telling you, our purses must have some sort of invisible, magical ties that bind them to us. At least mine seem to! 

Purses are like a fifth limb, part of us. Much of our identity is wrapped up in our handbag. It's our safety net. Everything that's vital and personal is carried around in our purse. Driver's license, money, photos, pens, credit and bank cards, various papers and receipts, tissues, tampons, tweezers, comb, chewing gum/mints, powder compact and the inevitable lipstick. 

What's also interesting are the variations in purses between different personality types. I even run across the occasional woman who doesn't carry a purse at all. (How do they manage without?) Then there are those who bless the day those big, giant bags came into fashion. They promptly fill them with a motley assortment of 'necessities' till they weigh 25 pounds or better. They don't understand why they are suddenly experiencing back problems. I've even seen women with bags so big that they carried smaller purses inside them for that quick dash into the 7-11...!!!? Though I never carried a huge bag, mine usually do weigh quite a bit and I swear this is why one of my shoulders is higher than the other. I'm constantly having to adjust the shoulders and neckline of whatever I'm wearing to compensate for this lopsidedness. On the few occasions my husband picks up my purse for me, he always groans dramatically and asks if I'm carrying around boulders. Now that I'm getting older, it's getting harder and harder to wag that heavy bag around so I'm working on lightening the load. Removing the pound or so of lipstick and the $30.00 in pennies helps tremendously.

Some people have quite an assortment of bags in a vast variety of colors and styles to go with every outfit, not to mention those for formal evenings or other special occasions. They change purses as often as the rest of us change our underwear. Some love purses so much, they just can't resist them, like my daughter. While I maintain you can't have too many pairs of black shoes (or Laura Geller blushes), she vows you can't have too many purses. 

On the other hand there are those like me, who carry the same old bag till it nearly disintegrates. Season in, season out, no matter what we're wearing, we carry the same old battered purse. In dismayed surprise, we suddenly notice the worn out straps, the permanently scuffed bottom, the malfunctioning clasp or the broken zipper and sadly acknowledge it's time at last to break down and get a new bag. And that's traumatic because what if we can't find one that as perfect? 

Yes, I am that One-Purse-Woman. And like Goldilock's porridge, it has to be juuust right. Cannot be too big or too small. Must be a neutral color that will go with any shoes and clothes. Can't be too deep as I abhor rooting around in a bottomless pit of a purse that I can't find anything in. Must have some body and structure so it will stand up to the abuse it will receive at my hands, such as the relentless slinging onto the floor of the car. Plenty of pockets inside and out and preferably one of those largish outside compartments that hold a plethora of cards, cash and even a checkbook in lieu of a wallet. And there has to be enough room for the ten to fifteen lipsticks that invariably find a home in my "purse de l'année". And eventually gather dust, because once tucked in there, I never use them again. The exception being the inevitable Chapstick, which boasts a pocket of its very own.

Till next time,

"I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar or Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor." ~ Sue Townsend