Wallets and Purses
Created | Updated Mar 6, 2002
Wallets and purses, handbags and bumbags, dittybags, pouches, call them what you will - those mysterious containers carried by billions of people since time immemorial, holding all manner of personal items and some very strange things, indeed.
The standard items of money, plastic cards and identity documents are well known, as is the two-year-old condom, barely contained within its degraded package, or the drunkenly-scrawled phone numbers that smearily resemble hieroglyphics. Kept close, they contain an individual's identity in its most immediately verifiable form - and the hieroglyphic phone numbers might well be irreplacable.
It is widely regarded as offensive to peruse the contents of another's purse or wallet (or voluminous stuffed-to-the-brim black vinyl handbag, that most mysterious container of all). Beware! If you do succumb to temptation and steal a glance, be prepared to find something you didn't know, or worse - don't like.
These objects are quite often given as gifts. In some cultures, a coin is placed in the wallet when it is given, so that the wallet will never be empty of money.
The standard items of money, plastic cards and identity documents are well known, as is the two-year-old condom, barely contained within its degraded package, or the drunkenly-scrawled phone numbers that smearily resemble hieroglyphics. Kept close, they contain an individual's identity in its most immediately verifiable form - and the hieroglyphic phone numbers might well be irreplacable.
It is widely regarded as offensive to peruse the contents of another's purse or wallet (or voluminous stuffed-to-the-brim black vinyl handbag, that most mysterious container of all). Beware! If you do succumb to temptation and steal a glance, be prepared to find something you didn't know, or worse - don't like.
These objects are quite often given as gifts. In some cultures, a coin is placed in the wallet when it is given, so that the wallet will never be empty of money.
