I wonder as I ponder...

Old Bags....

Well, I was going to write this about purses, handbags, pocketbooks. What you call them depends on where you live, I guess. When I was growing up and living in California they were purses, in the Great State of North Carolina (where I really grew-up by raising a family) they are called pocketbooks. In California a pocketbook is a paperback book you can stuff in your PURSE! Pardon me, I've gone off on a tangent, rabbit trail, thought process (something else that depends on where you live as to what you call it....)

Anyway, I was going to write about those things ladies carry their stuff in. Men are supposidly once again trying to use them too...but a real man wouldn't be caught dead with one...ask my Ex, he always wanted one but was too vainly macho to use one, so I ended up carrying all his junk (i.e. medication for mental illness) in mine. He wasn't so macho that he would work and support his family, but that is another blog entry all together and at this point I don't have time to deal with it... nor the energy either!

Back to purses, I will for the duration of this entry call them purses for simplicity sake and my sanity. The old bag reference is because I just realized I'll be fifty-three in about ten days and it really sucks, because I will be an old bag.

So, speaking of old bags and purses; This old bag needs/wants a new purse. This is not an easy task. There is a form of social advertising called the purse. Too trendy and no one will take you seriously, too stern and people will think you use it as a weapon and fear being plummeted with it. I'm not a teeny bopper and I'm not Maxine from the Hallmark Shoebox Greetings, close but not quite. What to do? There is a vast expanse of looks between Hello Kitty and Chanell. Price being the first criteria. Size is another. I don't want to carry my entire life in it, but at the same time, I do need certain things. My ex-mother-in-law used to buy me those purses (pocketbooks, she was Southern) you see advertised in the back of the Sunday newspaper magazine. You know the ones, they have your initials embroidered on the big wide strap that locks fifteen organizer pockets closed. The leather look vinyl comes in a choice of colors: black, beige or white and it also has a matching checkbook cover and key fob that snaps inside the monstrosity. At one time I had three on the top shelf of my closet, yes in each color. I left them all when we moved to another house and claimed HER SON forgot the box they were in! I didn't want to hurt her feelings and besides....let her think he was the bad guy, she raised him....

Back to size...yes it does count! I'm short and fat, no getting around it or me, if I've been eating a lot of popcorn anddrinking lots of Diet Coke....with a Snickers on the side for energy, I will feel bloated. So a tiny purse looks like a cranberry beside a watermelon, a large one and I trip over the sucker because the straps are too long. If there are several pockets yes, I can organize it, but then I have to look through every pocket to find what I need because, as an old bag, my short term memory is, short!

Now, we get to the color catagory...basic black? Hot Mama Red? Go Green? Purple Passion? Do-Do Brown? My kids if they read this will no doubt be laughing! A print? That is almost a cry for help....I'm old, I want to look cute. True but I don't want to advertise it.

So we have pretty much come full circle...we are back to price...people who take too much medication for depression and have way more money than common sense are spending money on purses and then idiots who read too many magazines and shop because their lives are basicly empty (gotta fill something, might as well be the closet) are following suit because they believe the advertisers. I will carry all my stuff in a plastic grocery store bag before I will spend hundreds of dollars for a purse! Are you people listening to me? There are children who do not have shoes, warm beds or food and people are spending that kind of money on a purse? THINK ABOUT IT?! If you are one of them, hang your head in shame, and the next time you are tempted, send the money to Save the Children, or UNICEF, or another orginization similar to them...for crying out loud, get your head out of a magazine and smell the poverty of the real world.

Hmmm, I just have, I guess the purse I've got now will suffice for another year.....