On Handbags

This week, my wife asked me to get something out of her handbag. 

I know what you’re thinking. Anything—anything—but that.  Cuddle up with cockroaches.  Root canal surgery, every day for a month. Pauline Hansen for Pope. Anything but the bag.  

Because men shouldn’t get within ICBM range of women’s bags.  We don’t understand them or their contents. We don’t understand handbags any more than we understand the carriers of handbags.

For a start, they’re this weird physics-defying thing.  They may look small on the outside.  They even look portable. But inside, they’re like the TARDIS.  Not just big, but so huge that a man could get lost in there…

So there I am on aisle three.  For those of you unfamiliar with the inside of my wife’s handbag, that’s the beauty products section.  We’ve got hairbrushes and hair ties and hair shampoos over here.  Toothbrushes and clothes brushes and eyelash brushes.  There are enough brushes to paint the house. And clean the flues.   

Deodorants and sprays. Gums and glues, broaches and barettes.  Perfume, powder and paint. Eyeliners, mascaras and lipsticks and chapsticks. And that’s just the L’Oreal section.

Some of you are wondering how I can provide such good descriptions of what’s here in the handbag.  Put it down to the overhead lighting. The bakery’s down around that corner, past the snack aisle. If you come to the magazine and stationery section, you’ve gone too far.           

This is pretty obviously not a man’s bag. There’s no automotive section, no Zoo magazine, no chain saw oil.  Yes, there are accessories, batteries and torches. But the screwdrivers have cute floral handles. Oh, puh-leeze.  

Men, stay with me here. I am undertaking this trek for you. Bravely going where no man has gone before. Exploring the outer reaches of inner space. Inching towards a better understanding of the fairer sex.  

But now I’m lost, forgotten what I was sent here for. What was it...? 

I should have remembered The Man Plan. For those of the male persuasion, the key to shopping is to memorize where everything is, then plan a route to keep movement along the aisles to a minimum.  You’re in and out in three minutes, tops.

No, wait. I’ve got it. It’s in the lolly aisle, there among the shelves groaning with kilojoules of chocolates, lorryloads of lollies.  A complete  Cadburys section. And that’s what I was sent for: a Violet Crumble. Yes! Got it! 

I have battled the bag, and I have won.  I’ve ignored the distractions and the seductions, not been overwhelmed by the sheer volumes of stuff. I have found that which I was sent to find. 

This is a victory for one man, and for mankind.  Now, if I can only get out of here with the Crumble intact.