Lesson #1 Santa Claus is a myth invented by adults for holiday entertainment

Ever wonder why women always carry purses and men don’t? My  youngest sister, Haydee, lugs around a  shoulder bag that’s bursting at the seams. I never see her without it. Not once, but many times, have I frowned and asked her, “What’s inside that thing? Are you going camping?” Women are forever curious about the stuff in the next woman’s bag.

When I was a little girl my mother had this black and white shoulder bag, a promotional giveaway from Allied bank. It was durable, ugly, and very heavy. We called it her basurahan (trash can). Something came over me one day. I started taking things out of it. Maybe I was curious. Maybe my mild OCD trait was prompting me to organize it. Among the many papers it held, I saw several opened letters addressed to Santa Claus in the North Pole. I recognized my handwriting in one of them. Confused, I waived them up and asked my mother, who was busy with something across the room, “Why are these letters still here? Didn’t you mail them?” She snatched them away and snapped at me to keep my hands off her things.  Her anger puzzled me all the more. That was when I  began to seriously doubt the existence of jolly old St. Nicholas.

Of course I had my misgivings about Santa before, but not in a major way like this one. Back in 1979, my first grade classmate, Vicente, announced that Santa Claus gave him Lemon Corn for christmas. Lemon Corn!!!??? I couldn’t understand why he would give such an unspecial gift on a very special day? How could he be so cheap with Vicente and so nice to me? He gave me toys and Snow White stickers while he gave my classmate an everyday snack that you can buy for 25 cents at the 3 Brothers, a store close to our school. But I came up with an explaination for that.  This boy liked to tease other kids. Perhaps he had been classified as “naughty”  and therefore didn’t deserve to get a toy.

Santa isn’t real. This is one significant life lesson that came my way via my mother’s purse. It ranks way up there with other earth-shaking personal realizations like “My father is an adulterer.” Rifling through a woman’s purse can reveal much about the owner and also about life. That’s why women’s magazines love to ask celebrities about their expensive handbags and what’s inside them. And I admit — I enjoy reading that kind of crap.

Sometimes when I tidy up my bag, I like to spread out the things that I’ve taken out of it and pretend I’m a celebrity being interviewed by Cosmopolitan. The other night I went a step further and photographed them. Tonight, I went a little bit crazy. I thought that if Cosmo doesn’t care to put me on their pages, I can still let the world know about  the contents of my handbag. Curious? Look and see. Who knows….you just may get an epiphany the way I did.

Stuff  that will come tumbling out if I turn my bag upside down:

• ratty old flowery wallet
• eye glasses that have been twisted out of shape by Athena when she was just a year old
• purple duck barette
• cosmetic case with four shades of lipstick
• red plastic coin for a singing toy piggy bank
• 4 pens
• cepacol lozenges
• ricola cough drops
• my super duper ouchless Goody hairbrush
• small notebook for random lists
• medicine cup
• M&M’s  plain, to calm Athena’s tantrums
• crumpled receipts
• wads of table napkins from fastfood places
• imitation pepto bismol, just in case I feel a diarrhea coming
• maximun strength cortizone 10, anti-itch
• check book
• Sony Cybershot
• puzzle pieces
• paper clip that doubles as a hairclip
• Rupert’s blue star eraser
• opened but unused sanitary pad, violated by curious little hands