When my husband and I go to the beach these days, it looks like we’re packing for an army. There’s enough food to see us through a major catastrophe. Who knows, we might suddenly become the victims of an earthquake, a civil war, whatever.
My handbag has also grown in size with every birthday. I shudder to think what lies hidden in the depths of my bag. The truth is that I haven’t been able to reach or see the bottom of my handbag since the last millennium. So, I have good reason to worry about what I might find down there.
One day, after a long search for a missing item, I reluctantly opened my handbag, it being the only unexcavated item left in my house. Somewhere around mid-depth I retrieved a scarf I’d lost about two years earlier. As I dug deeper, a smell of decay started to emanate from the bag. I became very nervous. Was it possible that Madeline McCann, the little girl who disappeared in Portugal, was lying at the bottom of my bag? The thought was so distressing, that I immediately stuffed everything, including the scarf, back into the bag.
When I left university I moved to Namibia with one large suitcase and 2 boxes – these contained all my worldly possessions. Now I travel with the same amount of luggage when I go away for a week’s holiday. I have this lingering fantasy of backpacking through Europe. ‘Fantasy’ is the keyword here. If I had to travel across Europe now, I’d require a few ox wagons to carry all I’d need for the journey.
I’m currently doing my taxes, which means I’ve had to trawl through enough paperwork and receipts to stuff a king-size mattress. Reading through the receipts I started wondering whether they weren’t perhaps someone else’s. I couldn’t remember buying half the stuff. I recognized the daily necessities, like Lindt chocolate and coffee at Vida Café. Some of the items seemed like relatives I’d just been introduced to after being stricken with amnesia – I knew I was supposed to recognize them, but I simply did not.
I opened my closet to search for the item marked ‘Boots Brown’ on one receipt. Instead I found ‘Boots Brown x 3’. How did I justify buying another pair of brown boots, when there already were 2 pairs in my closet? I could only surmise that I had been suffering from a particularly potent form of PMS on that day – at least, as a woman, I have a scientific reason for being deranged one week out of every month.
Even though I hate shopping, I still can’t stop myself from buying more than I need. The worst is when I buy something, then walk past another shop minutes later, to discover a similar but much better and cheaper version of what I had just bought. We have named this syndrome Post-Purchase Cognitive Dissonance – basically, you immediately regret and despise a recent purchase. The best way to circumnavigate this syndrome is to instantly go into denial after a purchase – if you can’t remember it, you can’t regret it. Problem solved.
My husband went on a business trip to West Africa a couple of years ago. There he picked up a strange bug after eating chicken (they said it was chicken, but who would ever really know the truth). Other than suffering from nausea and diarrhea, he also had short bouts of memory loss. The first morning after his return he woke with a start and looked around our bedroom with big eyes. I was pretty terrified, as he clearly did not even recognize me. The thought occurred that he was probably experiencing a severe form of Post-Purchase Cognitive Dissonance, wondering how the hell he had ended up with all this stuff around him.
It reminds me of the Talking Heads song “Once in a lifetime”:
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself: “Well, how did I get here?”
And you may tell yourself: “This is not my beautiful house!”
And you may tell yourself: “This is not my beautiful wife!”
And you may ask yourself: “Am I right? Am I wrong?”
And you may tell yourself: “MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?”
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