Wednesday, April 09, 2008

GO: What I'm Writing Wednesday: The Mystery of Women, Fidelity and Purses


I have been wondering why it is that a woman can remain in a faithful relationship with the same man and never even consider cheating, yet she can't remain faithful to her purse for more than four months? She even openly looks for a replacement purse in full view of her current purse, which I am sure she loved completely and fully not long ago.

After long thought about this dilemma I have come up with a theory about this phenomenon. The reason that this happens is because we can't date our purses! We have to make a snap decision right there in the store that this particular purse is "the one". We don't get to try it out to see if it is going to fit into our lifestyle, or even if all of our credit cards are going to fit into the slots available. We just have to go on our gut reaction and decide that this is the purse for us; purchase it and take it home. It is only after we have it home that we find out about all the flaws.

One the other hand, we get to date our mate, and we have a chance to see if he will fit into our lifestyle. We get to determine if the fact that he doesn't eat green vegetables is something that we can live with or something that will drive us crazy in the long run. Eventually after enough dating we can make a rational decision based upon multiple trial runs in different situations that, yes this man's flaws are going to drive us crazy and we need to break it off, or we can live with the little inconsistencies, and we will be able to make a relationship that can stand the test of time. We can also decide if we are willing to put in the time to "help" the man change some of those flaws for the better. Hey it could happen, if he is willing.

Not so with a purse. We get the purse home and only then do we find out that the strap isn't quite as long as we thought it was. We discover that our favorite compact doesn't quite fit into the pocket, or there isn't an easily accessible place to store our keys. Now we have to live with these flaws, because there is no way that we can change the purse. It is an immovable thing.

So we try to adapt ourselves as best we can to "make the purse work" but eventually the problems really start to bother us. For me it gets to the point where I would rather not carry a purse at all than keep carrying a purse whose flaws drive me crazy. I have a shelf in my closet with perfectly nice purses on it all with some fatal flaw in their construction, I would rather go purse-less than go back to carrying any one of them.

That is why women always seem to be on the quest for the perfect purse. We tend to be like the big game hunter after the perfect trophy. We know that it exists like some mythical creature that some have seen. We haunt the purse department of our favorite stores looking for just the right purse. As I have stated before; in the ultimate show of betrayal we even do this while carrying our current purse. The perfect purse has to be out there, we just haven't found it yet, and when we do our quest will be over because we will be happy, at least until the season changes and then we will need to find the perfect purse in a darker or lighter shade. Who wants to be carrying a light purse in the middle of winter?

I suppose it is a good thing that we do get to date our spouses. Much less chance of being disappointed in the long run.

One hopes anyway. I'm off to search for a new summer weight purse, with a cell phone pocket and key pocket and a place for my wallet and a long handle ( I hate those ones with short handles). If you see anything like that leave me info about the store you saw it in in the comments. My pockets are getting pretty full from not carrying a purse.

Pax

2 comments:

Unknown said...

So you're saying that you want to upgrade to a model with a longer handle and eats green vegetables?

Unknown said...

funny! You see what happens when my editor skips town? I don't know the difference between leaves.

I miss you for other reasons too.