May 19, 2007 12:33 am
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A humbling lesson learned a few days ago: A man’s garage has a lot in common with a woman’s purse.
The precipitating incident occurred last weekend when my wife and I went to purge the garage of stuff to be tossed.
We were on the same page at first — out with that old table, begone those old flowerpots — but then the gender gap opened, and we both tumbled off the page.
Her: “What do you need this board for?”
Me: “I just need it.”
Her: “Why?”
I didn’t want to get into all the reasons why a guy finds a 2-foot-square board useful.
“I need it for ... purposes,” I said.
She just rolled her eyes and poked at the next objects — wooden stakes.
Her: “Can’t we get rid of all these? You never use them.”
Me: “Yes I do.”
Her: “For what?”
Me: “To STAKE things.”
This was going downhill fast.
She grabbed a set of my truck floormats from a shelf.
Her: “We can throw these out. You really don’t need two sets of floormats.”
Me: “Those are my winter mats.”
Clearly, this didn’t compute with her either, likewise with my various-size plastic buckets, my scrap lengths of wooden quarter-round, and my near-empty cans of Black Magic Tire Wet and wheel cleaner.
Her: “You do not need both of these. Just pour one can into the other.”
Me: “Can’t. They’re not the same. One ‘wets’ tires and the other cleans off brake dust.”
Her: “Why do you need wet tires?”
At that point I lost it. This was not going to work. I was getting my chops busted for wanting to retain stuff a guy needs to do stuff with.
Somehow, I had to make her understand. Then the thought hit me: Her purse.
If there is a female corollary to a garage, it is a purse. I’ve had to visit hers too often, and it’s never pleasant. But now I was going to turn the tables.
“Let’s go look through your purse, and throw out all the stuff you don’t need,” I said.
We went into the house and into the handbag.
Out came a little pair of eye goggles. Junk, no?
“No,” she said. “I use those for tanning.”
Next was a little notebook thingy with a snap clasp, its pages filled with room and window dimensions, paint-color samples and fabric swatches.
I was dumfounded:
“What ... in ... the ... hell.”
She snatched the book away as if it were her Bible, which, apparently, it is.
Also in her purse is her wallet, an overstuffed atrocity unto itself.
Among its contents is a discount-purchase punch card from a Medford outlet store specializing in underthings.
Apparently, Mankato has an ordinance banning sales of women’s underwear. Who knew?
The wallet also bulges with store receipts (in case she wants to take something back), credit cards for every cockamamie retail outlet in creation, a photo ripped from a magazine of a dress she “likes,” three tubes of lipstick (she never wears lipstick), coupons for a whole bunch of crap and her metal-implant card.
She has screws in her neck from an operation, and the card alerts airport security that she might set off metal detectors. Except she never does.
“You can trash this card and all this other stuff because it’s junk,” I said. “Just like my stuff in the garage that you said was junk.”
Game. Set. Match. A guy hates to grab a purse to make a point, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or e-mail bojanpa@ mankatofreepress.com.
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