I Bag A Win

Tracey wants the matching purse to the handbag she bought last week. We’d been ‘discussing’ it ever since then and, as usual, I was losing.

“Why haven’t you bought it?” I kept asking her. “It’s only $15.”

I’d pay five times that just to remove accessories off of our list of conversation topics.  I just don’t care enough about them to feign interest. Ten times that. Twenty if I can get a guaranteed lifetime ban.

And please don’t think for a second I don’t understand how important Tracey having a good purse is. I do. It’s where I keep all my money and the important cards I don’t want to cart around myself.

I don’t have a wallet. I hate them. And anyway, all I need with me are my license, my bank cards, medicare and my favourite cafe’s coffee card. I used to have a card purse I stole off Miss18’s Dolly magazine ten years ago, but it’s long gone. These days I have one of my daughter’s hair bands wrapped around them. It works a treat.

“But there’s nothing wrong with my old purse,” has been Tracey’s argument against the purchase. I really don’t understand how that can be a valid argument for not buying a purse but doesn’t appear to work for kid’s clothes.

Being a good husband I even offered to put her old purse through a spin cycle. Just to help her out.

“I wanted to buy it today when we went to the shops,” she said this evening.

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“Because you can’t take a hint,” she told me. “I walked you past the shop twice.”

I just stared at my wife at this point, but in my head there was a fair bit of, ‘Wha..? We walked…? You thought…? Wha…?’ going on.

Sensing my disbelief, Tracey continued. “I even said how I love the colours of the handbags and purses this season.”

Incredibly, from the look on her face, my lovely wife thought she was really making a valid point here.

“Tracey, we’ve been together 20 years. You must have known that wasn’t going to work,” I told her. “I never look at places like that. I certainly never look in those shops and think, ‘I should go in there and buy Tracey a bag’.”

I saw a memory flash in front of Tracey’s eyes and suddenly her whole demeanor changed. 

“You’re right,” she’ told me. “I’m wrong. I’m sorry.”

This was huge. I wanted badly to smile, but a part of me was thinking this was a trap. I never win arguments. Sorry, ‘discussions’.

I found out later the memory was of our first Christmas together and all the gifts I’d bought her – a Barbie Dorothy, grandma perfume and a pedestal fan. All of which I’d caught her looking at but none of which, it eventually transpired, she was looking at for herself.

“Look at me,” said my lovely wife. Not satisfied she had my entire attention she grabbed my face and held it so I was looking straight into her eyes. “Look at me!” she demanded. I looked at her, wondering what the hell I’d done wrong now. I thought I’d won. This didn’t feel like I’d won. “I never,” she said with emphasis, “ever, want you to buy me a bag.”

Unsaid, but perfectly understood by both of us, was the fact that my taste is shite.

“I promise you’ll never have to worry your pretty little head about it,” I told her. “But, please, go buy that bloody purse and stop torturing me with it.”

She has agreed to put us both out of my misery.

Actually, I think we can safely say we both won this ‘discussion’.

When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’  Facebook Page.

 ’raising a family on little more than laughs’