Chicago Mary would be shocked at my lack of finesse, were she to watch me pack for vacations. A 1980s trip to Vancouver, for example, marks one of the few times I actually used a purse. But then I had to put my change of clothes somewhere. The mentality behind that hands free style of vacationing is just that, hands free. Then of course if you make lots of purchases you can always slip into a thrift shop and buy a pack sack. That way you can carry it with you overhead on the bus and not have to worry about it being lost or stolen. And you will not have to wait for the driver to sort through 18,627 pieces of everyone else’s stuff before yours shows up. You might even get to be first into the taxi that way. One can dream, right?

Some of us stopped doing purse years ago, when police indicated that makes us a target for thieves. “But where do you put your stuff?” a concerned lady asked. She looked at me as if I had lost something far more serious than a handbag.

Why do we need to take stuff every time we go out the door, is perhaps a better question. What are we so afraid of that we cannot leave home without taking the house with us? On another note, do we really need the hotbed of germs that breed in the dark confines of a purse littered with candy, gum, and loose change all mixed up with crumpled tissues? Not to mention the disease-bearing little monsters we pick up when we set the hand bag on the floor of a public washroom. And then go home and set it on the kitchen table. And then we eat at that table.

Those cute little antibacterial wipes won’t help either, after all, they kill some bacteria but what of the other six types of germs? You know, staph, strep, spirochete, viruses, and mold.

Perhaps the most charming purse story can be told from the perspective of that bus driver, who sits and waits while a fare digs to the bottom of a huge bag. The fact that that fare just sat on the bench doing absolutely nothing for 47 minutes before the bus got there is another story for another time.

-- lmg

Linda M. Gigliotti has 20 years experience helping people produce excellent writing. She offers tutorial in the preparation of writing assignments for students, and proofreading services for other users of the written word. E-mail Linda at Linda.Gigliotti@castanet.net or call her office at 250-765-2221.