in the bag

I had a lot of really odd things floating around in the straw wooden handled purse I had resting against my knee. There were about seven loose leaf notebook paper sheets covered with scribbled and poor attempts of notetaking from Shakespeare. (I hadn’t cleaned out my bag since school got out). There was on one page the beginning of a poem I never finished (namely because I don’t write poetry). A Polaroid camera that decides to work some of the time is all scratched and squeezed in there. The Catcher in the Rye which is a book a Bess gave me randomly but I never got the chance to read it so for the past six months or so I’ve carried it around hoping to be lucky enough to get bored on the train and read it. I haven’t yet. And there was a yellow cartoon of 24 pristinely sharpened Crayola crayons. As this is, without a doubt, the weirdest thing in my straw satchel---you must be wondering why a 19 year old would carry around such juvenile art supplies. Truthfully, I am a doodler at heart. I chose crayons as weapon of choice because they are richly colored and the wax has a charming sheen in sunlight. And because I can’t stop buying them. Whenever I pass a school supplies aisle I have to grab a box even if I only have enough for the eight pack. The yellow and green carton of colored wax sticks are like a pack of cigarettes to a smoker for me.
I am telling you this because, because, I rummage through my bag whenever I don’t know what to say or if a conversation has gone stale. I fill the silence with my search from some object that doesn’t exist. Occasionally I’ll pull out a random object and try to use it as a conversation piece.
anything to save me from the terrifying silence...