The Bag Lady

Any woman knows how it feels to cart around your life in a bag.  Some of you are smart enough to just use a wallet in your pocket, and I don’t know how you do it.  Millennials just put everything in their phone and I, a child of the 80’s, just freak out about that.  I have to carry around a pile of stuff – medications, a calculator, pens, a monster jangling pile of keys, note pads, coupons, a protractor (that’s a joke, although I really did carry a protractor for years, to my husband’s great amusement, just in case there was an obligatory angle that needed measurement), and of course I go nowhere without my trusty Kindle.  My hoard of goods always gave my where-is-it seizure-prone Type-A brain a wink and a buddy elbow of reassurance, knowing that if I needed that little container of hand sanitizer or a pair of tweezers, I was good to go. 

Not even close, bud.

I look at vacation pictures of myself from years past and I’m always the easy one to pick out in the crowd because I’m the one slouched over from the weight of the large canvas Disney tote with the camera, the direction book for the camera (in case I accidentally push a button that turns the camera into a little walking robot that laughs maniacally and runs away), the raincoats, the suntan lotion, the extra bottles of water, etc.  The weight of that vacation bag and the weight of my Brobdingnagian laptop bag that passes for a purse has given me a permanent groove in my right shoulder and has pumped up the muscles in my entire right arm – I can hardly pick up a cat with my left hand, but my right hand could probably hoist a hippo over my head and juggle it. 

But just how much stuff do I really need to carry around?  Other than my perambulating pharmacy, a wallet, and my Kindle, I can leave most of this stuff at home.  In fact, yesterday I decided to clear out the canvas tote I usually take to work with me.  I hadn’t looked in the bottom of this thing in years, and the results were quite comical.  Here’s what I found:

• My old heating pad, which I thought my husband had stolen years ago, and he swore he had his own.  Point to husband.
• A dish towel.  I guess I had this in case there was a random plate at work that needed to be dried.
• A bottle of Coke Zero.  God knows how old it was, it didn’t even fizz when I shook it.
• A shattered CD case containing an old self-recorded CD that I had never put back.
• A cracked CD case containing the pictures of our 2010 New England trip, pictures that my husband swore he gave me and I was pretty sure he hadn’t.  Another point to husband.
• A copy of my SF-171 (government employment application) from 1989.  Done on a typewriter!  I thought that typewriter was hot shit back then.
• A copy of my wedding certificate.
• A half-bent blue folder, frayed around the edges, containing…nothing.  This was ominous.
• A YMCA Activ-Trax workout form from 2011.  Probably the last time I went to the gym.
• A Christmas card from a co-worker. 
• A half-bag of mixed cough drops.  They appeared to be okay, and the wrapper came off of one easily, but I wasn’t going to take the chance.
• A plastic container of earplugs.  Again, they appeared new, but for some reason, they completely grossed me out. 
• Dust bunnies up the ASS.  Did something move in here and just shed? 
• Probably about 10 lanyards, in all sizes, shapes, and colors, mostly stamped with some odd government acronym (like iSOCCER – yes, that really stands for something, but I don’t give enough of a damn to look it up).
• A pair of white cotton underpants.  Seriously.  Was I planning a trip to the ER while at work – because, God knows, we always have to have clean underwear!
• My arthritis gloves.  Both pairs.  I bought the second pair when I couldn’t find the first pair.
• And finally, at the bottom, an entire package of the office supply saviors called “punch hole reinforcements.”  My husband calls them “paper assholes.”  (This is apparently a Naval term, but boy, did it apply yesterday.)  Anyway, the package had burst, and the adhesive backing over the years peeled off of nearly all of them, so they were stuck to everything…the underpants…the gloves…the lanyards…the dust bunnies.  I added a colorful adjective to the Navy term when I saw this mess (as in “fucking paper assholes”).  My dedication to this bag was evident as I was picking these things off of every square inch. 

These things suck.

So there you have it.  I’ve learned there’s a definite thin line between a woman carrying a purse and an honest-to-God hoarding bag lady.  I will continue taking that canvas bag to work, but it’s a lot lighter now.  As for the monster purse, well, I actually graduated to a smaller purse a couple of years ago, and while I went through the serious withdrawal of not having a sewing or makeup kit at all times, I gradually learned to move on.  I still have the protractor, though, but it’s on my iPhone now.  Yes, there’s an app for that.  Time marches on.

-- Rebecca