Question Of The Day

Sometime last year I had a conversation with another young woman about the contents of our bags. "You can tell a lot about a person by what they carry around with them," she said. I've pondered this ever since -- is it true?

And if it is, what, then, do we make of the fact that any time you ask a guy what he's got on him, he will invariably produce a wallet and a set of keys and nothing else? How the fuck do they do that? How do you get through a day with only a wallet and keys? The guys will say, "hey, you don't really need all that stuff you carry." As if we did this by choice.

I have a theory about this.

I think men only get away with the wallet-and-keys thing because they know that there will always be a woman around with a bag full of crap to help them if they need something that doesn't fit in a wallet or hang off a keychain. I don't know how women got saddled with the packmule gene, but it's a trait that seems to transcend culture and progress. There are nomadic women schlepping gourds across the North African desert as I write this, and I've got my own bag o' junk that goes with me everywhere.

How about you? What's your daily burden? |