A woman’s purse is an empire.

I mean, seriously, you can find anything in there. A woman could rule the world as long as she had a nice satchel standing loyally beside her. And she’d be pretty darn lost without it. It holds practically everything we could ever need, and in emergencies everything to rig together, McGuyver-style, what we don’t have.

A woman’s purse also holds all sorts of mysteries. My mother used to chastise us if we ever looked in her purse without telling her. It gave our little imaginations something to toy with every time. I mean, what could possibly be in there that would merit such a response from her? Did she have some dirty little secrets, some little black book that we could potentially come across and accidentally betray her supposed innocence? Birth control? Another credit card dad didn’t know about? Oh, the suspense.

Perhaps it’s the delicacy of the whole money subject that makes us guard our purses with militance. If our checkbook happened to open to a particularly delicate page or the number of credit cards betray our bad habits. What then? Some deep private secret could be revealed inside a gum wrapper. Entire personalities can be gauged by what’s inside and we sure don’t want everyone knowing how much we make.

Here’s a lesson for men. You MUST condone a woman’s desire for choosiness when it comes to her empire. She will have you covered when you pop your pants button. Her entire identity rides upon the shape, style, size and material of her purse. It’s essential that she find the perfect one, no matter the price tag.

Here’s what you’ll find in my favorite Green Monkey purse, a very revealing list, I would say:

1. Moist towelettes (I have a son and I wear makeup, what more can I say?)
2. Pocket mirror
3. Cinnamon Gum
4. Nail Clippers
5. Lip gloss
6. Small notebook with to-dos and shopping lists in the front and family gift ideas and favorite (baby/character) names in the back.
7. Checkbook
8. Cell phone
8. Several envelopes of money to differentiate the baby’s Christmas money from the leftovers from the water bill, because I’m really bad at keeping it all straight.
9. Sunglasses
10. A ton of pens, because where I work, we could fill buildings with pens
11. Stamps
12. Pocket knife (dare I tell about how I forgot to take this out of my purse on the last flight I took?)
13. Various gift cards (did I mention, I’m a big saver?)
14. Various receipts (and also a tracker of every cent spent?)
15. Card holder for all my membership, insurance, credit and debit cards with a few pictures of the fam mixed in.
16. A cute change purse with lots-o-change.