Cute Little Bastards

After a year plus of full time daddydom I have come to the realization that Mum’s have some distinct physical, mental, emotional, and social advantages over the male species in terms of child rearing. Some would argue that it doesn’t stop with child rearing but this is a family ManPreneur’s blog so I won’t go into that. I know this whole “women are superior to men” concept is a revelation for you as much as it is for me. There’s that whole ability to produce and grow a little human being thing. On top of that, chicks have boobs.

Not only do these look good, babies find them delicious, cuddly, and nice to look at. Don’t we all I can hear you saying. One of natures more perfect blends of form and function. The only reason girls don’t stare at them like I men do, is that they have a set of their own. Pay attention to young girls who haven’t developed yet and you’ll see what I mean. They want a set of their own, and until they get them, they stare at chests just like we boys do.

But, I digress. The point of this article isn’t those points, sitting way up firm and high, as Bob Seger once so aptly put it. This is about a woman’s advantage due to the social phenomenon and tool called a purse or handbag. Let me tell you brothers, this is a conspiracy!

According to some exhaustive research I performed on the history of handbags

>Google keyword search=’origins handbag’
>click on first link
>read three paragraphs

handbags have been around since the time of the Egyptians. Additional exhaustive research

>while on same website
>move finger in downward motion on scroll wheel to
>read beyond first three paragraphs

uncovered that by the 16th century handbags got downright functional and were often made of cloth and worn diagonally across the body. Apparently even men wore these things.

See here, I’ll prove it.

“In the 16th century, handbags took on more of an air of practicality with the use of everyday materials such as leather with a drawstring fastener on top. During this period, cloth bags were used that were made larger and used by travelers and carried diagonally across the body. The 17th century saw more variety and both fashionable men and women carried small purses with more complex shapes. Young girls were taught embroidery as a very necessary skill to make them marriageable and we see the rise of beautiful and unique stitched artwork in handbags.”

Ladies today (what with purse snatchers and all) will certainly tell you that having to look after a purse can be burdensome at times but they also know that their purse provides a huge amount of utility for all types of activities, nefarious or otherwise. They even present an opportunity to display your sense of style. Pretty cool. We men like to hand our keys or other male flotsam and jetsam to our women when our pockets are either nonexistent or overloaded. Handy, eh? Of course, they are quick to seek revenge for this behavior by handing us their bags to carry in front of our friends.

Purses can hold all sorts of magical things but their amazing utility grows exponentially when you have kids. Let’s face it, kids of all ages (even the grown up kind) come with some serious baggage. And when we decide to become parents we sign up to carry some amount of their baggage around for the rest of our lives. We do this happily (well, not all the time) because we love our kids and we understand the reciprocal nature of carrying your kids shit around, namely 1) your parents did it for you so in the cosmic, karmic world you have to pay that forward 2) A women with a purse is capable of MacGyver-like capabilities when tending to the challenges that kids throw at you. Here are some quick examples:

As you can see, all these challenges have one thing in common – the handbag. You can imagine that as time marched on as a professional dad this really started to piss me off. I’d be at a park with John and Julia and see some kid grab hold of a park trash can just oozing with germs and ‘Whaa!’ (Bruce Lee martial arts sound effect) quicker than the kid can put their hand in their mouth out come the anti-bacteria wipes from the women’s purse. I mean, that’s just not fair. I’ve been brooding about this for a long time. Sure, I want the function of the purse, but I’m a man baby. And I’m just not cool enough to pull off a real man purse. At least in America, you need to be one stylin’ motherfucker to pull off a man purse.

Then the other day I saw a guy riding his bike (he was a bike messenger dude like I was back in 1984) and he had on a sling bag. Sling bags, as you may or may not know, are cool because bike messengers are cool and badass. A sling bag I thought. That could work. It’s about the same size, it’s not dorky, it’s not gay (not there’s anything wrong with that), it’ll stay on easy enough. My search began.

I didn’t really find a sling bag online that really fit the bill. Most were sporty and too big, or well, meant for breasted people… But as I searched I had another idea. What about a military bag? Maybe the ol’ Army / Navy store could come through for me. Bingo! Nothing says man like killing things as we do in our armed forces. War, kill, equipment, man. Sounds like a perfect match for dealing with kids. Bingo Charlie – we have a direct hit! The military map bag. Heck I could even put some maps in it. Not only were they about the right size and manly enough (because they’re for war and all) but they’re cheap as hell. I got mine for about $15 with shipping. Beats the metrosexual versions from San Francisco (not there’s anything wrong with that) that cost a C note.

So there I was in the grocery store today when John went into full melt down mode. He was still smarting about me not letting him bring his 2×5 foot car toy into the store in the 1X3 shopping cart. The produce section pushed the little bastard right over the edge. Julia just looked on calmly like my good little girl (I wrote that last line especially for my wife). In any event, I assumed the normal position that I’m used to in this scenario (see table 1a = Totally Fucked) until I was about halfway through my 12 minute shopping trip. Right then it hit me. I had my new ManBag with me. And I had packed CANDY in my Manbag just two days before! As quick as you can say, MacGyver or a Bruce Lee Whaa! I had whipped out the Sour Skiddles. And John, my cute little bastard simply stopped crying. There wasn’t any wind down or lingering deep catching breaths. He just stopped crying, grabbed the candy and started eating it happily. He even shared with his sister. I had ManBagged his ass - Byaaahhhhhhhh (for correct interpretation and pronunciation of Byahhhh! see Dave Chappell below)!