E D I T O R ' S_N O T E

Word by Word, Anne Lamott's biweekly column, will return Thursday,
March 4.

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T A B L E_T A L K

Are there people who just shouldn't have kids? Discuss the world's worst potential parents in the Mothers area of TableTalk

The road to hell was paved with handbags
--An innocuous response to the key-stowage dilemma, or the first step on the slippery slope of obsessiveness? Carry a purse and find out.

BY SUSAN McCARTHY | All my life my mother has carried one or another large purse, full of many remarkable things. I have often marveled at her confidence that everything a person might need -- Band-Aids, lipstick, folding hatchet -- is in her purse, and at the incredible difficulty in finding it where it lurks among the ticketstubs. Her purses, despite being large, festooned with noisy keys and adorned with colorful doodads, have a poltergeist ability tovanish utterly from human ken and then suddenly appear grinning inthe middle of the hall floor, or on the table in a pool of mysteryfluid, or across town at the garden center.

Despite the wonderful mysteries of my mother's purse, I havechosen to forswear the magic and repudiate purses altogether, forthey come with too many accompanying curses.

First of all, if you have a purse, you have to carry it.You have one less hand free, or one less shoulder free, and it limits your range of movement, making it awkward if you suddenly need to leap in the air and click your heels together. Sure, youget used to it, but so do people with malevolent dagger-wieldingdemons on their backs -- I am generally fed up and I do not want tohave to get used to one more thing.

A purse is easy to steal. Visible, recognizable, detachable.It might as well have a target painted on it. Picking pocketsis a skill, but purse-snatching is an entry-level job.

Even the gaudiest purse is easy to lose. When I was givenone, in seventh grade, I took it to school. There I set it downand lost it every time I had a thought, which meant several timesa day.

But most of all, a purse represents the first step on the slippery slope to loveliness. Why don't men carry purses? Becausethey aren't trying to be lovely. Purses are needed mainly to carrycosmetics and what are known as "sanitary supplies." It's thecosmetics that scare me.

Cosmetics are meant to make a person lovelier. As anobsessive individual, I long ago decided that if I were to try topursue loveliness, there would be no end. I would never be able to stop applying foundation at the neck. It would be whole-bodyloveliness or nothing. As for beauty being only skin-deep, I don'tknow if I could accept that. I'd probably have to get my internalorgans prettily tattooed. So years ago I determined to consider loveliness beyond me and work on my personality. Or at least onpassing as a native of this planet.

Thus obsessive attempts to control my obsessiveness have ledto no need for cosmetics. Also, because of my obsessiveness, Idon't get out much, hence, even less need for a purse. Also if Ihad a purse I would have to decide whether to call it a "purse," a"handbag" or a "pocketbook," choices of significance -- how canone leave the house until that's been hammered out?

Having no purse, I jam stuff in my pockets. This meanswearing things with working pockets, limiting the attire options,but I have already mentioned abandoning loveliness. OccasionallyI feel compelled to wear superficially lovely, pocketless garmentsin order to pass as a female earthling, but one can always put akey in one's stocking, next to the mad money.

I admit that I have cheated. Backpacks and book bags haveflitted through my life and have attempted to become Big Purses.Sometimes I have weakened and slipped a wallet into a backpack orkeys into a book bag (or, most depraved of all, into the pocket ofa companion), but always I have drawn back from the cliff,realizing that the next thing would be groping around in it forlipstick and then I would be going to sleep with slices of kiwi onmy eyelids and I would be lost to a world of loveliness.

Once you have a purse, of course, there is a natural desirefor completeness, a desire felt by residents of all planets I know,not just my mother, and if you are not careful you may end up witha satchel so loaded with penknives and road maps and hankies andpolice whistles and glue guns that you need a small wheeled cart totransport it all.

In the golden technological future, we will all be followed byrobot retinues toting our stuff for us. There will be nodistinction between girly girls with big purses and manly men withbulging pockets. Everywhere we go, we will all have the comfort ofbeing accompanied by lots of our nicest stuff, including devices torepel pirate robots hijacking our own robots, so it will benecessary to wear blaster pistols and personal jet-packs andfuturistic tight-fitting clothing (why does one never dress baggyin the future?) with big flanges on the shoulders, but I still donot expect to have time to waste on loveliness.
SALON | March 2, 1999

Susan McCarthy is the author, with Jeffrey Masson, of"When Elephants Weep" (Delacorte, 1995). Her last story for Salon was TheWorst Trip Ever.