laniology

I had to write a column based on a hypothetical situation for my editorial writing class and I was having major writers block.  My frightening but hilarious professor just told us that we were “walking to work one day and we saw a purse in the middle of the sidewalk face up. What do you do? Now write a column.” 

 Alright…I have no idea how to write a column. But ok, here goes. I asked for some assistance from various woman-like friends along the way so I decided to post the finished product. (Thanks guys!)

Ps. I totally borrowed some wit from a previous note of mine, but I figured since you can’t really plagiarize yourself it would be ok. Finals are stripping me of anything creative or original these days.

 READ ON. :D

       I once had a conversation with a wise young man on an elevator about the complexities of the female mind. “They’re like Rubik’s cubes,” he tells me, “you spend hours trying to figure them out and you just never can.”

     Well, for any guy who has been chronically stumped by the puzzle that we call “female,” I have a secret for you. The cheat code that will take you to another level of understanding women—is in her purse.

     It’s the reason why we don’t let men go through them. We know that if we let them rummage through our personal things, we would lose some of the mystery that is so crucial to maintaining our overall sense of power.

      Well that, and because we want to protect them from finding scary things that they wouldn’t understand. But I’d say that the main reason is because a woman’s identity, the core of her being, the basis of her existence, the definition of her sense of self, is all in her bag.

   Ok so that might have been slightly overstated, but a girl’s purse is pretty important to her. No matter if she carries a small suitcase full of things that she feels she can’t go through her day without, or if she totes a small clutch with only the essentials, a woman with her bag is like Linus with his blanket. She needs it to feel secure. With it, she feels like she can go out into the world prepared for anything that might come her way, from stubborn flyaway hairs to closing her first B2C account.

     I would probably have a minor melt down if mine was ever lost or stolen. Which is why I could totally sympathize with the owner of a mauve-colored, leather Marc Jacobs handbag that was left sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on Edgewood Avenue yesterday.

    First of all, how do you not notice that this beautiful bag you were once carrying was no longer safely nestled between your arm and your body? This should not have happened. How long has it been here? Why hasn’t anyone picked it up yet? These were all the questions scrolling through my mind as I stood over the bag, face full of wonder and confusion.

    Immediately after those unanswerable questions ran their course, I was faced with another one that had to be answered. What was I going to do about it?

    Well shoot. I’d been stopped in the middle of the sidewalk now for a good 30 seconds. People had walked passed me, some had even stared. I couldn’t just walk away now, right?

     I guess I could have. No harm no foul. It’s not like it been my bag, and I don’t even know this woman. As long as I didn’t steal it, or any of its contents, my conscience should have been clear.

    But it wouldn’t have been.

   Because if it were my bag, I would want it to be picked up by someone trustworthy and held for safekeeping, so that I would have a better chance of getting it back. If I leave it here, someone else might steal it.

     As a woman, I also felt a sort of sisterly duty to make sure that this lady’s purse was returned to her. I couldn’t let her essence remain laid out in the middle of the sidewalk for any man to just come up and uncover its secrets.

    In a vicarious sort of way, I felt her permission to look through her things. Her secrets were safe with me, and I was hoping to find some sort of identification for my new unnamed sister.

     After looking through a phone, wallet, ipod and what seemed like a break up letter to a guy named Jack, I learned the information needed to return the bag to its accidentally negligent mother—and that she apparently has great taste in music but horrible taste in men.

  “Jack,” the letter reads, “you’re an insensitive jerk and your ego is getting old. Stop calling me.”

    Clearly he never got the cheat code.

I always meet interesting people on the elevator.

I don’t know about you, but in my experience, every few days there is someone who refuses to obey the social law that requires people to stare mindlessly at the door in front of them or the changing numbers above them until the doors open again, releasing them from the uncomfortable silence and unfamiliar people.

I’m not complaining. I look forward to it. I often get on an elevator full of people and try to guess who it’ll be each time.

Most of the time I’m wrong.

But anyway I’m riding back up to the 12th floor, struggling with the giant box my mom sent me in the mail that’s full of stuff I forgot at home and a box of raisinettes. The sound of giggling girls catches my attention and once I conclude that they aren’t laughing at my unfortunate-ness, the observation of my four elevator mates’ begins.

Two guys, two girls. They giggle, they talk about some…stuff. Ok I guess I wasn’t paying that much attention but I was too focused on the fact that my arms weren’t long enough to fully grasp the box comfortably, to be a super creeper.

The girls get off at a lower floor, say goodbye to the boys and yell inaudible instructions to them as they continue down the hall and the elevator doors begin to close.

“What did they say?” boy 1 asks boy 2.

“Dude I don’t know.” boy 2 returned with a look that we all often get when we’re faced with any mystery of the opposite sex no matter how insignificant. 

“Do you know what they said?” boy 1 says to me. 

Here we go, I think, with the excitement of a prospective story to tell Lauren later. (we both seem to always have good elevator stories.)

“No, sorry,” I answered.

“Women.” he says, shaking his head and looking at me like I’m a dude who’s supposed to relate or something.

I can then literally feel the bad joke coming because I know he realizes that:

1. I am in fact a woman, supplying him with enough irony to be corny.

2. Because I couldn’t supply him with an answer to his question, he is now left to pick up his hanging invitation of a stranger into his conversation.

“They’re like Rubik’s cubes…you spend hours trying to figure them out but you never can,” he says laughing.

Bingo. Humor is definitely his exit strategy.

He looks up at me again like he’s expecting me to agree with him. Is this a part of the joke? I was seriously beginning to question.

“Um, alright,” I say with a laugh that probably sounds fake, but I was genuinely amused.

I hadn’t heard that one before and he was probably twice as ironic as he intended to be because the little Lizzie McGuire-esque, cartoon version of me, in my head was shaking hers and thinking the same thing about him. 

“See you later” I promised as they got off on their floor.

I couldn’t help but think of Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness and the scene where he completed a Rubik’s cube in like 30 seconds. I wonder if he understands women.

Probably not, because despite Will Smith’s sheer awesomeness I can pretty much bet there isn’t a man alive who can fully solve the puzzle that is female.

 And we’d like to keep it that way. ;)