Unexpected Purpose

a Saturday story

I carry a coin purse. Learned it from my dad, who always did likewise. I’m not a fan of the name. “Purse” seems too feminine for me to say that is what I put in my left front pocket every day. It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Reverse Peephole” where Jerry is carrying a European-style leather bag and, to his discomfort, his friends start calling it a “man-purse.” Jerry calls it a “European carryall” to make it sound more sophisticated and stylish. Elaine bluntly says it’s a purse. When a thief steals it on the street, Jerry shouts to a cop that the guy took his “European carryall.” The cop gives him a look of confusion. After several quick attempts at telling him what it was that was stolen, he finally says, “He took my purse. That’s right I carry a purse!”

So, while I might prefer calling it something else, it is what it is and yes, I carry a coin purse.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired an antique one from the 1950s with the OU Sooners football schedule from 1953 printed on it. It was a cool, and practical old thing I could carry around. But about a year ago the plastic out of which it was made started to become stiff. I realized if I continued to use it, it was going to crack and be ruined. So, I retired it.

But you don’t find coin purses commonly sold in stores. I did find them on Amazon though. And I found a pretty decent one, but you had to buy three.

On my recent trip to Madagascar, my coin purse served an unexpected purpose. We were in the process of going through security at the Antanaravio Domestic Airport in preparation for our flight to Tamatave for our Bible Training Conference. As happens too often for my liking, I was picked out for a more thorough inspection. It was the most thorough inspection of a carry-on bag I had ever experienced.

One thing I have learned is it is best just to smile and be cooperative in those situations. Combativeness serves no purpose except to annoy the agent. The young man was having me take everything out of my backpack and show it to him. This included books, which he opened and leafed through every page. Nothing was left unexamined. It was an excruciating process.

He didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Malagasy or French, so we worked off of body language and pointing. So, when I took my coin purse out and showed it to him, I could tell by his facial expression he wanted to know what it was. It was full of coins. Holding it in the palm of my left hand, I turned it over, put my right hand under it, and squeezed it so that all the coins fell out into the palm of my right hand.

A huge smile came across the security agent's face. It was as if I had shown him an amazing technological advancement in the realm of coinage transportation.

Now that I had his attention, I decided to reverse the process. I turned my left hand back over, squeezed the coin purse, opened it up, and poured the coins from my right and back into it. Then I released the squeeze and showed him that the coins were now securely kept together. He was so fascinated and happy I thought he might break out into applause.

That’s when I had a thought upon which I acted without fully considering the potential bad outcomes. I took the coins back out of the coin purse and handed the coin purse to him in a way that he understood that I was offering it to him as a gift. Normally, that shouldn’t be an issue but I was in the middle of an extensive security search at an airport.

So, as soon as I had made that move and he understood that I was offering it to him, I wondered if it might be taken as my attempt at some sort of bribery. Could this be misconstrued? Fortunately, it wasn’t. He happily accepted. I made his day. After we finished, as I was walking away, he was taking it around and showing the magical coin purse to all of his colleagues.

I bet Dad never expected his coin purse habit would make a Malagasy man on the other side of the world happy one day.

Coin Purse