What? Not? To wear?

What I would like to know is this:  when did we start wearing bags?  Didn’t we used to just carry purses?

I came upon handbags for sale in Nordstrom’s the other day while searching for Easter shoes for my daughter.  An assortment of leather bags, some with chunky chains attached, were on sale, so I picked one up, dug around to find the tag and fainted dead away at the price.

Four hundred dollars?  All the money I’ve spent on purses in my whole life–including the pale pink fake leather number I carried in high school–have not added up to four hundred dollars.  Seriously.  And what in the world are women putting in those gigantic bags?  Small dogs?  Small children?  Portable television sets with attached VCRs?

I did buy a pair of shoes from Nordstrom’s.  I only shopped from the sale rack and found a suitable pair of black flats to wear with my dark “skinny” jeans because that’s what Oprah told me to wear.  You think I kid, but I do not.  I take my fashion advice from Oprah and only Oprah.  (I kid.)

Before my purchase, though, I thought it best to doublecheck the regular shoes, the not-on-sale shoes, to make sure I wasn’t missing a better deal and a cuter pair.

So, tell me, who in the world is paying two hundred dollars for flat leather shoes?  (Are you kidding me, Nordstrom’s?)  I guess the same people who pay two hundred dollars for a pair of jeans.  The same people wearing bags the size of Delaware.

I may have crossed a line from trying-to-be-semi-fashionable to fuddy-duddy-cheapskate.  I know.  What next?  Will I start wearing one of those disposable plastic bonnets to protect my hair from rain?  Will I slide my fake leather shoes into rubber overshoes?  Will I carry a purse with twenty-seven zippered pockets that is advertised in the backs of old-lady magazines?  (Do they even advertise those purses anymore?)  Will I buy my polyester pants at K-Mart?

I bought a designer bag from Goodwill not long ago.  I probably grudgingly paid $6.99.  It’s black, roomy and constructed from nylon and I would tell you the label on it, but I can’t remember.  What I do remember is the day that I rifled through that bag and discovered a small pocket, sized for a cell phone . . . and in that pocket a neatly folded $20 Canadian bill.  I left it there as a happy reminder of the serendipitous moments of life.

Because if you’re headed toward polyester pants and plastic rain bonnets, you need little reminders of your past life . . . when you used to look for designer labels at thrift stores.