Okay, so it wasn't really my first purse. I'm sure there were "little girl" purses, and straw bags carried on Easter with one of the really uncomfortable lacy dresses my mother chose for me. The dresses that were so unlike my personality that I felt invisible in them. It wasn't until much later that I learned to find the empowerment and humor in putting on a new identity with a piece of clothing.

But the purse. It was an early eighties purse, a tan-to-goldish color of the super-trendy parachute cloth variety. I was in 6th grade. The first year of lockers. I had recently decided to give in to the reality that I was a girl, and tried to meet expectations accordingly. So I bought the purse, and roll-on sticky, shiny lip gloss to go in the purse. I put my wallet in there, and the small spiral notebook that served as my journal. Probably a pack of ChocolateMint Bubblecious, too. I hadn't completely given up on being me, and I had to hide it, if my mom found out I was chewing gum with my braces, she'd have killed me!

I carried the purse to school religiously, stowing it in my locker during classes. One day, I returned to my locker to find my lock gone, my books strewn around the locker bay, and the purse missing. Sixth graders were snickering over my writing and personal items. I ran to the bathroom, where I found the purse, gutted, an obscenities about me scrawled in lip gloss on the mirrors. I never trusted another purse until I was in my twenties and my best friend's father made one just for me, of buffalo leather, with a secret slide-out compartment.