Pass cards and purses are not a happy mix.

I sometimes wonder why it is not considered fashionable for a man to carry a purse.  If you are a woman, you can load up with everything you need for the day, sling it over your shoulder and head out.  If you are a man, you can only do this if the carrying device is slightly impractical and starts with the letter "b", and naturally each comes bundled with a bonus set of presumptions.

Book Bag = okay, but obviously you're a geek or nerd.
Backpack = okay, but obviously you're a hippy.
Briefcase = okay, but obviously you're in cahoots with "the man".
Murse = object of ridicule
Purse  = cross-dresser

There are some compensations for not being allowed to carry a purse.  For one thing, we are permitted to have pockets in our dress pants.  Whether it was a decision made by fashion magnates in years past, or just a weird quirk of social evolution, the final result is that women get purses and men get pockets.

For the most part pockets will get you through the day.  If you can't accomplish what you need with your wallet, keys, some change or a wadded-up Kleenex then you are probably overextending yourself.  Need a pen or a calculator?  Then maybe you had better set yourself up with a woman or a cross-dresser.

If you are a woman, you get to carry around a little leather shoulder bag with infinite capacity inside.  I have fond memories of mom's purse when I was a young lad.  There was nothing fancy about the purse, it was just a mid-sized faux leather satchel with a shoulder strap and a brass twist-clasp.  Either mom was psychic when she loaded up her purse, or it had a Tardis-like ability to be larger on the inside than the outside.  Any time you needed something, mom would produce it from her purse.  Got a headache?  Out came the Aspirin.  Need a nail clipper?  Mom to the rescue.  Pen?  No problem.  Portable dialysis machine?  Probably.

Monty Hall encountered this on his show Let's Make A Deal.  He would walk through the audience at the end of his show, waving around money and saying things like, "I'll give you $50 if you have a picture of Teddy Kennedy sipping Drambuie on the hood of a 1953 De Soto."  And the women would be frantically digging through their purses because they just might have that tucked in between the dialysis machine and nail clippers.  As often as not, they'd actually produce what he asked for.

Which begs the question; why can they never find their pass cards in my building?  The purse girls fall into two camps in this building; the rooters and the thumpers.

The rooters get up to the turnstile and then start rooting through their purse for their pass card.  They will not give ground, nor allow anyone past them while they dig, sometimes spending the better part of a minute sifting through their worldly belongings in search of a grey plastic card.  The thumpers have apparently come to terms with the fact that their pass cards are lost in the otherworld nexus of their inner purse, and they try to use the purse itself to activate the reader in the apparent hope that it has inherited the intrinsic properties of the pass card that it has consumed.  They will thump various parts of their purse up against the reader until it gets tired of being struck and just lets them through to avoid further indignation.

We have dual turnstiles to get into the cafeteria, and it is not unusual to find both of them tied up at the same time by a rooter and a thumper.  Often they will know each other, and they will be carrying on a vapid conversation while they tie up both entryways.

"Hee hee.  I can't seem to find my pass card again this morning.  I hope the baby didn't eat it.  They'll chew on anything at that age."  [rustle rustle]
"I know what you mean," [thump thump] "Yesterday the poodle ate our baby's diaper and it was sooooo gross." [thump thump]

Behind the thumper is Buttocks Boy, who is waiting for his turn at the card reader so that he can dry-hump it with his ass.  Mind you, I'm not one to talk.  I carry my wallet in my front pocket, and there have been a few times when my hands were full, and...

There is one lady who I often encounter in the mornings who has it down to an art, though.  She and I park our cars in the same parkade, and she invariably gets there just ahead of me.  Here is her regular routine.

Pull slowly up to the card reader.  Stop.
Pull ahead a bit more.  Stop again.
Pull ahead again.  Stop again.  Put the car in Park.  Apply emergency brake.
Unbuckle seatbelt and adjust coat.
Fetch purse from console and start rooting through it for pass card.
Eventually retrieve card, close purse and put it back in the centre console.
Undo emergency brake, put car in drive, pull ahead another foot, and reapply Park and brake.
Step out of car and run card through reader.
Get back into car.  Fetch purse from console, carefully store card in purse again, and re-stash it in the console.
Adjust coat and put seatbelt back on.
Pull ahead approximately 20 feet into the first available spot (thank goodness for the seatbelt!)

In the mean time plonq has gnawed halfway through his left ankle again while he's waiting.  Gah.

Time for coffee.