Writing in Snow

The Things in a Woman’s Purse

Word count: 563

Every Thursday there is a column in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review Journal-Sun. The name of this column is Show Us Your Purse and it always has an interview with a female executive or up and coming professional. Two photos accompany the article. One photo shows the woman with her handbag and the other is the contents of the purse.

Every time I read this column, I think about the things that my purse has contained over the past few years. Some of the items I carry are normal stuff (for a writer) such as a wallet, hairbrush, journal, and pen. Some of the other things I have carried in my handbag are not only unusual, but also downright weird.

I think the weirdest thing I have ever carried in my purse was my mother’s false teeth. Mom went into the hospital in 2007 and they took her teeth out of her mouth. The nurse put the teeth in a container and handed the container to me. I put the teeth in my purse and immediately forgot about them.

Several days later, I went to a nineteen-day Feast at the Baha’i Center in Las Vegas. I was looking for something in my purse, so I started taking everything out of the handbag and placing them on the chair next to me. I placed the container holding Mom’s teeth on the chair. I person sitting on the other side asked what was in the container. I opened the container and there were my mother’s teeth smiling back at me.

I also had a potato in my purse. I went to a Farmer’s Market where I bought a bag of potatoes. The bag containing the potatoes broke and scattered the potatoes on the ground. The merchant helped me pick the potatoes up and put them in my purse. When I arrived home, I took the potatoes out of my purse and put them in the fridge.

I thought I got all the potatoes out of my purse, but apparently, I did not remove them all. A couple of days latter, I had to go through the purse to find something in the bottom. As I was unloading the contents of my handbag, I found a potato I did not remove. A woman who witnessed the incident just smiled and said, “I’ve had a lot of weird stuff in my purse, but never a potato.”

Today, the only odd things I have in my purse are three Universal Product Codes and plastic grocery bags from the 99¢ Only Store. In the near future, I will have other odd things I put in my purse. I know this, because I am always putting something in my purse and forgetting about it, in addition, the weirder the item in my handbag, the greater the odds that I will have to unload my purse in public for everyone to see.

I have not ridden on an airplane in years. That being the case I suppose that will be the next place I have to empty my handbag. There is no telling what weird items I will have in my purse, I just hope my next flight is a domestic flight and not international. It is one thing to have weird stuff in my purse on a domestic flight, but on an international flight something else entirely.