THE DISAPPEARING PURSE

Jerry was telling me the other day how one of the female volunteers with his Sheriff's Department "Citizens On Patrol" units had driven away with her purse atop her car. She had been preoccupied while she was gathering stuff to put in the car and set her purse on the rooftop to get it out of the way for a moment. It wasn't until she got where she was going that she realized she'd never taken her purse down -- and who knew where it had fallen off? She retraced her drive, but there was, of course, no purse lying in the street anywhere.

Jerry remarked that his first wife had done the same thing and that a week later she found her purse tossed on their driveway, minus the money she had in her wallet.

My mother had a beautiful red T-bird like the one in the picture above. When my kids were little she often drove from Long Beach to our house in Westminster to see the kiddies, and she always brought goodies for them, and sometimes a couple of grocery items for me. (She was a very practical mother!)

One day she arrived with a bag of donuts. She laughed as she told me she'd stopped at a donut shop near her house, purchased 6 donuts, which they put in a paper bag for her. She put the donut bag on top the car when she used her keys to unlock the car door and forgot to take it down when she got in. About the time she got the car back into the middle of the street she saw, in her rear view mirror, the bag of donuts fall off the roof and land in the street. She told me she wasn't going to deprive HER GRANDCHILDREN of their goodies, so she pulled to the side of the road, ran into the street and retrieved the bag. Luckily it had not opened and was none the worse for wear. I asked if she was embarassed, and she said yes, not because she retrieved them but because she left them there in the first place.

Another time she decided to bring me a carton of eggs. She did the same thing with those but it wasn't until she heard some bumping on the trunk that she realized the whole carton of eggs had been lost down the back of the car. She did not stop to retrieve them that time, knowing for sure they would all be broken. When she arrived at my house she went around to check for any mess the broken eggs might have created. There was no mess, but there WAS one lone egg that somehow had been caught behind the license plate and had survived the 20 miles ride to my house.

The most I have ever done is to leave a cup of coffee on the roof of my car. It didn't stay there long because the first person who passed me honked and pointed at the roof, and I was able to stop and remove it before anyone else saw it. I felt very foolish -- but I do think that this is a fairly common happening and I've seen plenty of people driving with cups of something on their car roof.

I try very hard to avoid setting anything on my car roof or on the trunk. If it's not up there I can't forget it. I hate to make scenes, and driving out on the road with some forgotten item perched on my car roof is, in my mind, a scene! However, I do need to tell you that I carry so much stuff in my purse that I am not sure my car would be able to move with my purse holding it down!

Jerry's friend finally borrowed a phone and called her own cell number, since her cell phone had also been in the purse. A lady answered and said she found the purse in the street and at that exact moment was heading toward the address she found in the wallet to find the owner! It was a great ending, I thought.