Those Girls Are Such a Bad Influence

I love handbags, but I never spend real money on them. I get them for presents or I buy them at secondhand stores and yard sales. I’ve occasionally bought one at the outlets or even the end of season clearances at the mall. But I’ve never been able to conscience spending close to what used to be a week’s salary on a handbag.

MadDog was part of a conversation about this during our 1L year and laughingly made a remark to the effect that my husband would be a lucky man. It seems that his wife, like several of my friends, is a lover of the Coach line. And like these friends of mine, who shall remain nameless *cough* Pei and Dirty Birdie *cough*, she doesn’t mind spending the dough for these (admittedly very attractive) purses/handbags/whatever the proper terminology for these things is.

Some part of me is very uncomfortable with the idea of carrying something so expensive. What if I drop it? And it lands in a muddy puddle in the parking lot? I would probably have a minor breakdown, much like the one I had the day Jenna peed on my silk comforter. I had to leave the house for several hours because I was so mad. Can you imagine how I’d react to damaging an expensive purse? I mean, for my birthday last year, Pei and the Dirty Birdie went in and bought me a tiny little Coach… thing. I don’t know what you really call it, but it’s just big enough for a lipstick, your driver’s license, a few dollars, and maybe your keys and an inhaler, and when you zip it shut, the strap fits on your wrist. making it perfect for a night out when you don’t want to carry a purse. I love it, but I rarely carry it because it’s too nice for the likes of me. I spill things and drop things and I don’t want to hurt my pretty, pretty Coach thingie.

But every once in a while, a girl falls in love.

And when that happens, she’ll do anything to be with the object of her affection. When they are parted, she will pine and long for the day when they can finally be together.

This is the story of my love affair with a bag that costs more than my interview suit.

And it’s all Pei’s fault.

She donated this bag, this wonderful bag, to the public interest society auction. It was not love at first sight, but I did admire it quite a bit. It’s not flashy or anything, but somehow, over the course of the following days, my love for it grew and grew. I wondered if it would make me a bad person to ask Pei to take her donation back and then give it to me. I decided that yes, it would. So I resigned myself to seeing the bag spend its life with someone else.

The night of the auction, which was held the day before my birthday, Ash almost saved me. He bid on the bag, but it was part of a package and the price got to be far too high, and so another 3L won the bag and I HATE HER because she stole my True Handbag Love.

After the auction, Pei was all “WHAT?? WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU WANTED THE BAG? I WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU!” And I was all “Wahhhh! I didn’t know I was going to fall in love. I never fall in love like this! Wahhhhh!”

Here we are, nearly four months later. I still think longingly of my True Handbag Love, and I even looked at it online a few times, but I don’t really need it, and I don’t have gobs of disposable income (or any income at all) laying around the house, and so I’ve never even tried to order it. But all of a sudden, I’ve graduated from law school. And people apparently want to send me gifts as a token of their congratulations on this achievement. Some of those gifts have been of the green papery sort. And the thought of the Tumi bag keeps coming back to me.

On Tuesday of last week, I was taking care of some bills and such online. One of the “and such” things was filing a claim against a buyer on Half.com for sub-par goods. As I was logging in, it suddenly hit me: eBay! The THL might be on eBay!

I’ve never bought anything on eBay. And plus which, I don’t know anything about buying this sort of thing on eBay. I might be willing to pay what, for me, would be a significant chunk of change for the THL. I would NOT be willing to pay for a knock-off of THL. So I turned to the experts for advice.

Pei was kind enough to send me a long email detailing what to look for in a listing and even found the exact THL listed. There’s still a week to go on that auction, so I am keeping an eye on it, waiting to see if I can buy it with some of my graduation largesse. Then I will carry it almost every day, or at least very, very often, because I love it and do not want to be parted from it if I ever manage to get it back into my life.