bag ladies i've become my mother. my mom lugs around two purses - a big, black one filled with god-knows-what and her reading glasses, and a chanel leather purse that ages well. she carries her car keys and lord-knows-what-else in either purse, the first for work and the latter for all other occasions. i guess it's inevitable that all females will eventually carry purses, in fact, it's a sign of maturity if you have to. if that's true, then at age six i'd officially become a lady because i remember this red penguin toybag i grabbed from my sister who was happily content with a blue dog one, and lord-knows-what else we dumped into that purse. i remember carrying around empty purses and making my dad hold on to it while i chased silly cousins and boy friends - lalaking kaibigan! how dare you, i was a kid! - up trees for a while. my dad would ask what in the world i carried in that purse, so i thought i needed to put something in there, so i took a pen and my barbie doll and her clothes and a comb for us both and some paper because without paper, a pen miraculously picks up on skin, clothes, on uncles' houses' walls. i dropped the purse when i discovered the school 'backpack,' and never looked back since. after college, i learned i can't walk around town without a bag to carry my stuff in, but i refuse to carry a 'purse' - that's hella girly. if i were to lug around a bag, it'd better be a real one, so i went from army bag to red backpack to trendy black one-shoulder bag to trendy $10 gray GAP bag to trendy $10 old navy dark denim mail bag to my current yummy gray timbuk2. it can carry schoolbooks and notebooks and newspapers and clothes and lord-knows-what-else and it didn't bite my shoulder. like a private journal, you're not supposed to lay bare the contents of the bag a female is carrying. only god-knows-why that is the case. ;-)   ¶ 9/20/2004 03:00:00 AM