My girlfriend and I went to the bookstore on Sunday. Because, despite what you’re reading here, I’m actually an avid reader. After making our selections, we went up to the counter to pay. The total came to exactly $20.01.
I’ve heard of “a penny for your thoughts”, but never “a penny for other people’s thoughts”—you know, in written form. I reached into my pocket and came up with nothing but lint balls.
That’s one of life’s little mysteries: how lint always finds its way into your pockets. It’s so common it should almost be a form of currency. Think about it—no more worrying about correct change for tolls when you have an endless supply of pocket lint to pay with. “That’ll be $3.50.” Here’s two nickels and a tuft of blue fuzz. Keep the change.”
Turns out, lint still isn’t recognized as a form of payment yet, so I had to ask my girlfriend if she had a penny.
And that’s when our simple bookstore trip turned into a full-scale archaeological excavation.
She began to dig through her purse literally, pulling a shovel out of it to help with the process. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Indiana Jones himself showed up, believing the Holy Grail was buried in there. Or worse… his lesser known, significantly less thrilling brother, Ohio Jones.
Ohio Jones isn’t an adventurer like his brother. He’s a very niche scientist, a world-renowned expert in purse anthropology—a man dedicated to studying the ancient artifacts, lost civilizations, and assorted gum wrappers buried within the depths of handbags. Some say he once uncovered a long-lost TV remote in a purse—no one knows how it got there, especially since the owner didn’t even own that brand of TV. And legend has it he’s still searching for a purse that doesn’t contain at least one crumbling granola bar.
And judging by the ever-growing pile of debris emerging from my girlfriend’s purse, he would have considered this a career-defining discovery.
I braced myself. What horrors lurked within?
- A single bowling shoe (but no sign of the other one).
- Last weekend’s leftover gyros (somehow still warm, and yet, completely inedible).
- Rocco, our pet rock, looking strangely unfazed by the chaos.
- A snow globe that, when shaken, inexplicably made it start snowing outside.
- A fully functional Etch A Sketch displaying a suspiciously accurate self-portrait of my girlfriend—who hadn’t touched it.
Anything but a penny. Not even a single piece of pocket lint.
At this point, the cashier looked visibly annoyed, and a line had started forming behind us. That’s when I tried bartering.
“What about a mint?” I asked. “Pennies are technically minted after all.”
The cashier stared at me like I was mintally unstable while my girlfriend, now knee-deep in her purse, seemed to have vanished.
That’s when things got truly unsettling.
Her purse just sat there, untouched. As if it had swallowed her whole.
I’d heard of The Portable Door, but never The Portable Purse—though, technically, all purses are portable. Just not in the sense that you can step into them and instantly teleport anywhere in the world.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
If you’re thinking, “This all sounds far-fetched,” then clearly, you’ve never seen a franchise milked for all it’s worth. Because I was thinking “sequel”—as in The Portable Purse, the completely unnecessary follow-up to The Portable Door.
Unless you were the cashier or the increasingly impatient guy behind us—then this is absolutely what happened.
Just as I was about to launch a full-scale search and rescue mission, my girlfriend suddenly rematerialized out of thin air.
The cashier, too weirded out to care anymore, just waved us off. “It’s fine.”
On my way out, I placed a half-sucked mint covered in pocket lint in the Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny tray. Because I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through what we did.
Turns out, I had a penny in my pocket the whole time—but obviously, I couldn’t waste it. I needed exact change for the toll on the way to pick up Indiana’s stepsister, Illinois Jones. Besides, how else could I afford my penny wedding and special guest pennywhistle performance by Pennywise?
Some might call it The Penny of Doom, but I just call it budgeting.
I should also, at the very least, have some Pennyroyal Teas on hand for the occasion—it’s only proper.
But that’s a story for another anecdote. Or franchise.