Bag Lady

I hate purses.

They fall off my shoulder and, because I don't use any one purse regularly, I can never find anything in them. Usually Tiffany and I share a purse and she carries it because she likes purses. She likes funky purses and classy purses and sophisticated purses and colorful purses. Normally, it's not a problem to share. But there's a certain sharing limit. Like, she'll draw the line at my water bottle.

"It's not a backpack, Rebecca," she reminds me.

Anyway, on our recent trip to New York, I took my own bag. You couldn't call it a purse. It's a satchel, really, and as soon as our friend Teresa saw it, she gasped in horror.

"What is this?" she cried.

"A bag," I said.

She touched it gingerly with two fingers.

"Did it used to be this color?" she asked, flipping the inside flap over.

"Ohhhh, wow!" I said. "I don't even remember that!"

Teresa refused to let me out of her house with my bag. So she ran upstairs and got one of her extra purses, a blue leather number. Tiffany loved the purse at first sight.

"You carry it," I told her. "I'm good with mine."

"Absolutely not," Teresa said.

I took the purse. I put it over my shoulder and dug through it at various times throughout the day to find my hotel room key, my sunglasses, my eye drops and, yes, my water bottle. All of that was annoying. But the purse was great looking. It looked funky and classy and sophisticated and colorful ALL AT ONCE.

It looked, as soon as my friend Zac saw me when he arrived,

"absolutely nothing like you, Rebecca."