The Concept Of Murse

Today’s subject is: Things To Carry Stuff and Things and…Stuff.

                Being a female, I naturally own one or two purses; owning several bags as a female is a law of nature that must never be questioned. Being me, I naturally use none of them. I prefer a backpack, actually, though it sometimes becomes so heavy that I just let it choose the location I am traveling to, drop it wearily, and camp beside it, using its shadow as a sort of awning during the summer.

                I have several friends, all who are male, who have a sort of “murse,” namely, a backpack that they never lose bodily contact of, come hell or high water. I could never name all of the things they carry, but the pure randomocity of it all makes embarking on an archaeological dig in one of THOSE babies much more terrifying than rooting through a woman’s purse, because while there may be near everything in a woman’s purse, there are two kinds of everythings—male and female. Females’ bags usually contain things like toiletries, receipts from the dollar store from 1981, and a full wardrobe of clothing. Guys’ bags—the ones I know anyhoo—usually contain around $302.78 in nickels, a rubber hose, a miniature television set, dozens of electronic charging cables from everything from mini fridges to an iDog, three full video gaming systems,  calligraphy ink, the remains of a BLT from Pita Pit (I think it was a BLT from Pita Pit anyways; anyhow it resembled one somewhat), burned photographs of algebra teachers riddled with pencil stabs (the photographs), toilet paper, a pair of pajamas, a dead beetle, several He-Man action figures, glass eyes, a rental tuxedo, and Pop-Tarts.

 I rest easy now, because I know for a fact that because of my several all-male friends, the president of Pop Tarts Industries can sleep well at night, knowing that his company will never, ever go bankrupt.

                We women have a perfectly good reason for packing what we do into our purses and bags and backpacks and carry-ons and suitcases and whatever else we can take on vacation without being fined for interfering with the plane’s flight speed due to weight—if ever we crash in the middle of a deserted island and the apocalypse comes and everyone dies except for us and a convict from Toronto, by God we are going to be dressed well.

                I frankly do not understand guys. They confuse the heck out of me. Recently I witnessed one of my murse-wielding friends packing his backpack. He first dumps everything out on the(garden) bed and begins sifting through it, saying he has to get rid of most of the stuff in his bag because it is all useless crap. Then he picks up a ball bearing from Goodwill, looks at it, scrutinizing, contemplating the decaying process, and stuffs it into the front pocket. “Might need that really soon,” he mutters.  Then he’d pick up a farming supply catalogue from1988. “Never throw this away,” he murmurs to himself. Then he picks up an empty Germ-X hand sanitizer bottle. He hesitates a little on this one. Finally he decides to put it in the bag as well. “Used that on my first date,” he says.

                And so it goes on, until the garden bed is clean and the backpack looks like it did before, in other words basically resembling Augustus Gloop attempting to demonstrate a flex-off in a small, non-elastic, incredibly resilient backpack from Target. Then my friend, whom I will call “Mitzel” for further reference, went into the church we were having youth group at and returned carrying several water bottles filled with sand and gravel, an Xacto knife, and two short pieces of bamboo from Home Depot. I have no clue what he was doing, but I suspect he was making dumbbells in order to begin working out and balance out the strength in his back from carrying his backpack, what with its own personality and climate and everything, with his arms.

                Anyways, Mitzel keeps stuffing his backpack, starting all over every morning. It’s getting to be pretty scary. One time I saw tampons sticking out of the front pocket. Unwrapped.

Sigh. Welcome to my group of guy friends. I’m perfectly fine with it, however; when the apocalypse comes we can trade our clothing with them for Pop Tarts, which we will toast over our handy receipt-fueled fire. Maybe we’ll even share.

--Sabrina (possibly chef stef 2.0)