Are you a people watcher? Being in the fashion industry and a purse designer, I observe women and their purses all of the time. Walking through the Houston International Airport, I observed a girl running, as fast as she could possibly run, in high heels. That is understandable when you are trying to catch a flight. The strange thing was that she had five purses slung over her shoulder. These were purses, not tote bags. I thought at the time how funny that looked and have since wondered why on earth she would be carrying all of them.

It will forever be a mystery, to me, but here are a few thoughts:

She wanted to take all of them to use on her trip and didn’t have room in her checked luggage.

She didn’t have time to change “the stuff” from all of the purses into one purse.

Why do you think she carried five purses at one time?

~ Sharon Barber

Story kindly submitted to us by our guest, Ruth Carroll.

Is it a radio?  Is it a musical instrument case?  What is that uniquely shaped object?

Those were the questions whirling by me while I ate breakfast at my lodge last summer.  The lodge owner approached me with an incredulous look and said, “Wow, what’s that … a new style radio? … that’s awesome, and I love the cobalt blue material”.

Next up, our server steps up with my steaming over-sized omelette,  saying, “watch your plate honey, it’s hot and by the way (alluding once again to the beautiful blue object) is that one of those cool, hand crafted flute cases?”.  At this point a bushy tailed ground squirrel jettisons out of  the pine tree next to me and lands, you guessed it, smack on this object of curiosity … so now I have the lodge owner scratching his head wondering the most effective way to get rid of the squirrel, plus the server about to launch into a full throttled scream … well as luck would have it the squirrel’s attention was quickly drawn to its mate, the owner had to deal with some crashing plates across the busy deck, while the waitress composed herself, she timidly asked … “so what is that causing all of this attention?”.  Not noticing the straps underneath the object that would clearly have revealed its identity.

Looking up from my cooling omelette I replied, oh this … this is my purse … a Sharon Barber original!

*Ruth Carroll is the owner of wildcelt.com.  They offer a beautiful fine Arts and Entertainment portal with well researched articles about current Art and Architectural exhibitions.  There you will also find a wealth of information from film commentary to critiques of classic, contemporary and foreign cinemas plus many more topics of interest.  Visit Ruth and Wildcelt.com here.  

The parking lot, where I worked, had a fence all the way around it.

One work day, I parked in the parking lot next to the fence and got out of my car only to be attacked by a mother mockingbird.  I had no idea there was a nest, in the fence, nearby and was shocked to see how protective and aggressive they are.  My first response was to swing my purse at it in defense.  When I did that, my purse and everything in my purse started flying out and spread out all over the parking lot.  The bird kept coming back at me.

Still trying to defend myself from the mockingbird, I managed to collect my purse, all of the little bits of money / change and all of the many pieces of “stuff”.  I was embarrassed and frightened, but finally safe once I made it inside the building.

You never know when “the world” will see what is in your purse.  Beware of the mother mockingbird.

Sharon Barber ~ owner / designer –  www.sharonbarber.com