My life as a Purse
Monday, September 24, 2007
When I work outside the house, I almost always wear a suit. I have done this for many years, and if I run into people that I worked with during those times, they almost don't recognize me unless I am wearing a suit.
I like to say that it is a matter of formality, contrasting with today's casual attitudes. But whatever the reason, there is one very important side effect. And that is pockets.
Some of the home videos that I have made, particularly with my son Adam, attempt to be humorous. For example, we showed him on a skateboard approaching a garden hose (at a slow rate of speed). When he reached the hose, I stopped the camera and had him lay face down with the skateboard off in the corner of the picture. In a cartoonish way, this told a little story.
One video that I often threatened to do was to train the video camera on my desk as I arrived home from work, mumbling about purses that women carry and all the stuff in them. As the mumbling dialog progressed, more things would come out of my pockets—cell phones, calculators, PDAs, pens, notebooks, billfolds, and so on. At the end, there is a rather impressive pile of Stuff on the desk. And the soft ranting about purses and fanny packs goes on in this imagined video.
But I insist when asked that the suit is to emphasize formality and dedication to principle.
As I noted earlier, there have been a string of weddings that we have gone to, in sort of a reducing radius. First wedding was from a circle of friends, next was a distant relative, and the last was of my stepson. Our clothing grew increasingly formal, the events increasingly grand, and while there was no tuxedo involved, there was a bow tie and a very serious suit for me and a very very nice dress for my wife.
Now being a simple country boy, I don't always understand the mechanics of fashion, but as ones dress gets nicer, on this gradient to the core of the family as it were, the dress is more decorative and beautiful, and, in one sense at least, less practical. There is nowhere to put anything. Not that dresses have pockets (except for the New Years Eve party that my daughter Aleksa sewed an intererior pocket to the dress she wore to contain valuables, with very tangible benefit as it turns out) in any case, but there are fewer things that one can do with your Stuff.
So the progression, as it were, of the purses along this decreasing radius, is that they get smaller. And I don't mean a little bit. The purse for the latest wedding was approximately the size of a credit card.
And even though there aren't any pockets, that is, there aren't any pockets upon the person of the dress-wearer, Stuff needs a place to be Held.
So during the actual day of the wedding the purse starts out, well, shall we say, with Good Heft. In moments of weakness, I have been known to call that particular purse "The Purse of Doom". No man should look inside. As the day progresses, the size of the purse reduces to the aforementioned microscopic scale.
But the presence of things is inescapable in our world, even at grand celebrations. So somehow the pockets, previously thought to be unfillable due to how it distorts the suit, seem to be collecting things. Cameras, the aforementioned wallet, temporary flowers, menues, order of service (two for good measure), table numbers, (that is, Mr&MrsLederer tbl#15), boxes of chocolates and for a while, a pashmina. Well, that was on the arm, but I think you are seeing the drift.
Oh, and I almost forgot the tissue, perhaps the most important of all as the service is marvelous and wonderful, and there is sniffling all around me, possibly even from the men. When the string trio hit Ava Maria, out they came. Some even made it over to my wife, the mother of the groom.