I did not fall off the planet. I've been reading a lot about gravity and I have it on very good authority that falling off the planet would be, in fact, impossible. I've just been procrastinating. I've historically been a poor correspondent, and this is, after all, sort of like a long letter to myself and anyone else who might wander in. I had to stop in and post this story though. I thought about this the other day for the first time in a long time and wanted to share it.

About four years ago, when I was living with Kallie and her rotten children, and not long after I'd started my current job, Nate had to bring a batch of cookies to school. He was in sixth grade. I am not the most Betty-Crockerish of moms, so Kallie was kind enough to bake the cookies. I had the important task of putting them on a plate, covering them with tin foil and remembering to give them to Nate when he left to catch the bus in the morning.

Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.

As the bus was pulling away, I realized that the cookies were still sitting on the counter. I was seized with a sharp pang of mother guilt. I'd failed my son. He was going to school with no cookies. No...I resolved...not MY son. I was almost ready to go to work anyway, so I threw my shoes on, grabbed my "purse", picked up the plate of cookies and ran to my car, determined to catch the bus before it got more than a few stops away.

I need to take a moment here to explain about the "purse" because it will become important to the story later. I do not carry a purse. I have never carried a purse. When I was a kid, my mom was always telling me I needed to start carrying one because she was afraid that when I was grown, I wouldn't be used to carrying one and I'd lose it or just walk off and leave it. She needn't have worried since I still don't want to have anything to do with a purse. I carry a wallet in my back pocket and that's pretty much all I need. My reluctance to join the ranks of the "pursed" should have been my mother's first clue that I was a budding lesbian. However...Kallie had given me a fanny pack as a gift. It seemed sufficiently un-purselike to her and she thought it would be helpful for me to haul things around in. Which it was. And I did use it, although I was always a little uncomfortable with it. I never quite made peace with the fanny pack. I couldn't help thinking of it as a "purse". Not a purse, but a "purse". I'm sure you can see the difference. On with the story.

I took a shortcut to a place where I knew the bus stopped and waited there for it to arrive, which it did shortly. I leapt from the car with the cookies, ran over to the bus, and handed the cookies through the window to the driver, instructing her to give them to my son. The whole exchange went smoothly, and I was on the road towards work in just a few minutes. I drive almost an hour to get to work every day, and I spent the drive feeling very proud of myself for taking such good care of my boy. It would not have been unlike me to not remember about the cookies until mid-afternoon when it was too late. I have very good intentions, but sometimes my mind is like a sieve.

When I got to work, I parked the car and happened to glance over to the passenger seat...and there sat the plate of cookies.

The sun glinted off the tinfoil.

I had a moment of utter confusion. I very clearly remembered getting out of my car and taking those cookies over to the bus and giving them to the driver...so how could they be in the car still? And very slowly...I began to wonder...what...exactly...did I hand to the bus driver? And equally slowly it dawned on me what was missing. The "purse" was gone. It should have been in the passenger seat. When I realized finally that I had given my purse to the bus driver to give to Nate, I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I knew I was going to have to drive all the way back out to the school at that point, so went into the building to explain that I was going to be very late that morning.

I was laughing so hard I could barely explain myself, and my co-workers weren't faring much better. My son had called home from school to ask Kallie why I'd given him my "purse" and she in turn had called work hoping to catch me and couldn't resist telling my co-workers what had happened. Evidently the poor kid didn't realize I meant to be giving him cookies. He thought there must be some reason I was giving him the purse. He found it so confusing and upsetting that he cried. Of course that didn't stop him from taking all the cash out of the purse before he gave it back to me (we had a little exchange in the hallway at school -- he gave me the "purse" and I handed off the cookies).

All of which goes to show that my mother was right. I can't be trusted with a purse, and I haven't carried one since.