Shopping for Handbags

I should have known better. I used to work with a young woman who was handbag-obsessed. She was the "designer" type, you see. Knew her purse and handbag makers backward and forward.

And how could I have forgotten that a local museum actually featured a complete show about handbags? Literally hundreds of the things on display, and people paid to see them! I should have known there was an alternate purse and handbag universe out there.

But this was different, I told myself. This was something simpler. Just go pick out a new handbag for my daughter, who has notably simple tastes. "None of that designer crap," she told my wife. "I hate all those logos. Just something simple, like this," she said, holding up what looked like a perfectly good purse. ("See?" I told myself, "I raised her right...')

"Except this gets dirty a lot," she admitted. Even I could see the grime. And I don't see grime on much of anything else.

So she needs a new purse and Christmas is coming up. Two days away, in fact. What could be so difficult?

We drove to Kohl's department store first. Figured there would probably be something simple there. Then we walked into the handbag department and I got hit by handbag sensory overload. There were literally hundreds of kinds of handbags! Leather. Faux leather. Leather with canvas. More leather. Short straps. Long straps. Buckles. Stitching. Snaps. Zippers? Anyone?

Nothing that suited my daughter's tastes in purses, however.

We got in the car and drove one whole parking lot south to Target. There we found even more purses. None were very attractive if you were being objective about it. But I realized that handbag hunting has nothing to do with objectivity. Finding the right purse or handbag, I quickly realized, may be the most subjective choice a woman makes in life. More important than finding the right husband, in some respects. After all, you can't expect your husband to walk around carrying tampons, lip balm and that giant collection of otherwise feminine knicknacks in his pockets. No, finding the right purse (every time) is a much more important choice...

I caught up to my wife, who was holding up a green purse that looked like it could have held a couple of 36" carp in a pinch. "No," I told her. "That's definitely not her."

Next came a trip to Old Navy. We found absolutely nothing there, either. The only highlight of the Old Navy trip was the overhead lights that made us look like we were swimming around in a fish bowl. Which made me think back to the purse at Target that looked like it could hold a carp or two. There was a theme developing here. Old Navy. Purses that could hold a carp. I realized that purse hunting was a lot like fishing! Because you do a lot of looking without finding, which is a lot like doing a lot of fishing without catching. And we think the sexes are so different in their makeup...

We still have Marshall's to check, my wife assured me. She had seen something there that fit my daughter's criteria earlier in the week. You know Marshall's, don't you? That's the store where they don't even try to fancy things up. Either the product hangs on its own merits or you pack up and go home. Marshall's is a no fuss place, like K-Mart with name brands and no Blue Light Specials. A couple years ago I found a really great suitcase at Marshall's. It had wheels on all four corners, which made my experienced travel buddies jealous at the airport. That's the closest a guy comes to buying a handbag, I guess.

On this visit to Marshall's, we walked straight to the handbag department where my wife picked up a canvas purse that looked sturdy as a shopping bag at Jewel. It was an ugly purplish pink that I knew my daughter would hate. "Put it down," I groaned. "Let's get out of here."

I realized that women must be terminally insane for wanting so many kinds of purses and putting up with the process of finding them. Going purse shopping explained a lot of things about the female branch of modern culture to me. Like why so many women walk around looking permanently pissed off. It's because they never found the purse or handbag that suits their needs! I know this kind of thing because I've watched Sex and the City re-runs, and my Sex and the City education tells me that many women will spend hours, days, weeks and months looking for something they know does not exist: The perfect purse. So they settle for the next best thing. We all know that walking around with the "next best thing" never makes anyone happy. I'm talking about their purses, not their husbands.

After leaving Marshall's and the rest of the handbag alternate universe behind, I told my wife I'd Google "plain canvas handbag" that night and see what I could find in terms of plain and simple canvas handbags. You try it. There is a whole canvas handbag universe waiting for you!

See, I'd learned a thing or to watching my handbag-obsessed former co-worker shop for purses via the internet. At least if you don't find what you're looking for, you haven't driven 20 miles and put up with nutso traffic.

Another thing I learned is that men and women are more alike than we think. Men have "Halo" video games to entertain them with distraction and violence. Women have purse shopping. It's really the same sort of process if you study it closely enough.

As it turns out, there really are a whole lot of places that sell canvas shoulder handbags. We should have looked online before we left for Handbag Hell. I'm glad for the experience and all, and to have learned a lot about the minds of women along the way. But I hope to avoid Purse Purgatory in the very near future.

Now about those shoes she wanted...