Purses

After KBR today I handed out stickers to the children who had successfully earned five stars during the day and most of the kids had gone home except Jellen. Jellen is a cool kid but sometimes a little bit different. I have Spiderman and Princess stickers along with a bunch of others that I let my kids choose from. He decided that he wanted the princess stickers which happened to be in a bag that I had gotten from another teacher to use for KBR. Let me clear things up, she gave me that bag because she received it from another teacher when she found out she was teaching that class. It isn't even a bag really, it is a full blown purse and a big ugly one at that.

Well Jellen walked over to it and proceeded to pick out a sticker with The Little Mermaid and then had to pose for a picture.

Ever since I purchased "the manbag" things have been different. I don't get stared at walking around like a tourist with a backpack. I feel like I belong in Taiwan along with all the other thousands of men walking around with a man bag. But I am beginning to wonder if there really is a difference between a purse and a man bag. When he walked over to the bag I got a little defensive. I didn't really want him looking through the purse. I wasn't quite sure if it was because everything in it was mine and I didn't want him to have access to it, or if that is the feeling which comes from having a purse in one's possession. Is there a power which comes from a purse? Then I started wondering about how I felt about my manbag.

Would I care if anyone looked inside of it? This is what the manbag usually looks like all of the time. I keep a camera in the pocket, a water bottle and all my spare change. I have a bag for shopping in the outside pocket and a few flyers that I like to keep track of. So there you have it, I have given you a complete verbal tour of the manbag. But would I feel comfortable with a person going through it while fully loaded? I would have my money clip, a book for reading when I get bored with the world, food and maybe tissue to use in case of emergency. It sounds simple enough but something went off inside of me today when Jellen reached inside the KBR purse.

Hopefully it won't drive me crazy for the rest of my life but I think I can kind of appreciate what girls go through when guys grab their purses. I don't really need a six year-old boy going through my purse and girls don't want men who act like six year-olds going through their purse either.