The Man Bag

I bought my six year old son a pocketbook. It wasn’t easy.

Tuesday night after dinner, I announced I was going over to the mall to find a nice organizer bag to go inside my new big black pocketbook. My husband gave me that look, the “You’re going to leave me home with all these kids during the bewitching bedtime hours?” So I took the Gecko with me to lighten the load for him.

We headed straight to the Macy’s purse displays. Mmm...delightful... Guess, Nine West, Fossil... We snapped, zipped, flapped, stroked and sniffed. We admired, explored, examined, and counted pockets. I favored a Giani Bernini black, shiny, soft nylon bag with a gorgeous royal purple interior. Gecko wanted its red twin, but not before he pleaded for a black flower-embossed Fossil wallet, a leopard print triple zipper bag, a bright blue leather sac, and a screamingly shiny black Guess satchel with a couple pounds of silver bling on it.

How could I say no? No, Gecko, you can’t have one of these fancy bags with cool hidden pockets because you are a boy. I couldn’t bring myself to say that, so I told him what a man bag is and said we would hunt around the mall until we found the perfect one for him. We hit up several stores and all the while I hoped he would become distracted by something else that I could use as a diversion. Maybe he would then choose on his own not to get a pocketbook.

But he was determined. I guided him away from the sequined evening bags, pointing out how they don’t have enough pockets. I reminded him that pink, silver, and yellow will not match most of his wardrobe so we should stick with black or brown. He finally settled on a black and gold mid-sized bag with front pockets, a back zipper, top zipper, and an inside zip pocket. He carried it up to the counter and proudly gave it to the cashier. She made some comment about how she thought he was carrying his mom’s pocketbook, and I thought, “So it begins.”

We asked her to cut the tags off because he wanted to use it right away. On the way out of the store he swung the bag high over his head and said, “Mom, when I become a soldier I am bringing this bag with me. I am going to fill it with rocks and BAM somebody with it.” Lol, that’s my boy.