Valuables

-
Brazil has one of the widest gaps between the rich and the poor. The rich have cars and private guards and cell phones and weekend houses on the beach. The poor have nothing. Today he might have a street corner where he can perform a hand stand, hoping to be tossed a coin. Today she might have an edge of a sidewalk where she can sleep for the night. Today he might convince some one to pay him for pulling weeds. Today she may be able to beg two kilos of food. Today he might have a pair of women's shoes, two sizes too small, with the heels broken off. Today she might even have a house that is hers if she can only stay in it for five years. But tomorrow maybe someone will burn her house down and she will have to start all over again. Tomorrow there may be some one with just a bit more power who can take away whatever the poor have today.

Understandably, with such a large gap between the haves and the havenots, there is a lot of violence. There are street corners where you keep your windows up so that you aren't threatened by a broken glass bottle. There are places where you don't go after a certain time of night. There are things you just don't carry with you.
And you plan to hand your purse over with no fuss should someone threaten you for it.
So I've gone through my purse, item by item, and asked myself if I would be okay if I gave it away, never to be seen again.

I start with the purse itself: A bargain picked up in the Amazing Chinese Department Store in Beijing. The brand name is "Hao Long" and it is "67% No Concept 43% Good Sense." I'd be sad to see it go, but maybe I could use my connections to have someone buy me another one.

Sunglasses: inconvenient to go without, but manageable.

Pink Lemonade chapstick: I would miss it, but I could get by with my Vanilla Cream chapstick that I leave next to my bed.

Hand Sanitizer: "Clean" is a cultural concept, I'll just adopt a different definition.

ATM card: Ha! Like anyone could get very far on the money that is left. Still, I mark down the number to call if it gets lost.

Bus money: It isn't a good idea to be without it, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I wonder if people would toss me coins if I stood on a corner and sang songs from "The Wiggles".

Baggie with toilet paper: I stop here. I invision myself walking into a public restroom with no toilet paper. Suddenly the world is an evil place. I need a secure hiding place... maybe I could pin my hair in such a way that I could hide the TP there? Or maybe I should carry it out in the open so that any potential thief would know not to bother with it?

Being ready to leave everything behind is more difficult than I thought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "No I" Phone

-
Image
It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
Read more

Amtrak Adventuring

-
Image
Trying to see it all, 2011 I may never look down the aisle of an Amtrak train without remembering a baby bouncing, holding fast to the seat as the train rocked and bounced even faster. All the world over, trains carry a reputation for efficiency and frugality. That has never been my experience with Amtrak.  The Adventure Begins, June 22, 2011 Thirteen years ago (almost to the day) our little family set out on our first Amtrak adventure. We thought three weeks touring the United States on a train with an infant made so much more sense than the alternative. The alternative being flying or driving (with the same infant) to a wedding in the middle of Cornfieldville, Ohio. Being young and foolish, it made perfect sense. Our baby did not yet sleep through the night, so sitting up in coach seating night after night wouldn't affect our sleep all that much. With a rolling ice chest filled with lunch sacks that prevented us from knowing in advance whether our meal was Option A, B, or C, w...
Read more

The Crazy Market

-
There is a place here in Beijing that I (not so) affectionately call The Crazy Market. Imagine four floors of wall to wall shops, one shop selling the same thing that 15 other shops are selling, all displayed with bright colors and lights and each shop having two or three people who call out "Hello! What are you looking for?" "Hello! We give you good price!" "Hello! How many coats you want buy?" "Hello! We have your size shoe!" (This one makes me want to stop and say "Oh, I greatly doubt it.") "Hello! Nice pearls for you!" If you so much as look at an item, it is immediately assumed that you will buy it and so they call out "What is your highest price? We give you good discount." The only exception to this is the very bottom floor that is filled with every imaginable and unimagineable sea creature and various sea creature parts in various stages of life. This serves as a good aroma which frequently makes its way up t...
Read more