The answer must be lost somewhere in the mists of human development—and I don't suppose it is something either men or women speculate upon very much. But I can think of some reasons.

Women don't have many pockets in their clothes. Men do. So one could guess that men don't need purses and (because they don't have many pockets) women do.

But why is this so? How did it come about that the makers of women's clothes concluded they didn't need to put many pockets on them? And why did men find themselves loaded with places to tuck things?

For instance, if I am wearing a suit or a sport coat, even without a vest I have at least eight pockets available. I don't have much in any of them, but I have them nevertheless. I'm not sure how many pockets the average woman wearing a pants suit may carry around with her. But I do know that my wife is always asking me to carry things for her in one or the other of my surplus pockets if she is wearing a dress or she is without a purse.

But women aren't without purses very often, or at least the woman I know best is not without a purse very often.

And, although I don't look very often, there seem to be a remarkable number of things in her purse: credit cards, keys, lipstick, cough drops, change, folding money, pictures of grandchildren and children, combs, bobby pins—well, most anything, as you probably know.

I don't know about other men's pockets, but I know mine carry my wallet, a handkerchief, my car and house keys and some loose change and that's about it. Oddly enough, I know almost at once when one or the other of these items is missing.

I have been trying to figure out why this is so, and after some reflection I have concluded that it is a holdover from the days when I was an infantryman and I had to carry everything I needed on me: ammunition, a rifle, C or K rations, matches, a first aid pouch, a mini can opener, a couple of grenades, and, believe it or not, a wallet.

I don't know why I needed to carry the wallet. There was nowhere to spend any money, I didn't need a driver's license and I was wearing a dog tag—a metal identification tag—around my neck. Or rather two tags, since if I got killed one went with my body and the other got carried off by the Graves Registration folks to let everyone concerned know what had happened to me.

I was aware of these things in my pockets because most of them were vital to my continued welfare, and so, every morning when I woke up (presuming, of course, that I had managed to get some sleep), I took inventory to be sure they were all there.

It was a habit that's stayed with me all these years. When I get dressed in the morning, I go through my little routine, checking my various pockets to be sure the wallet, the keys and the handkerchief are all where they are supposed to be. When I know they are all there, I know I can start the day.

I don't see women inventorying their purses very often and so I have often wondered if they really know what is in there. I've also wondered if men would know what they carried with them if they carried purses.

Unfortunately, the only man I know who carries a purse is a longtime acquaintance and I have never had the courage to ask him why he carries a purse and what's in it. He seems to think it is perfectly natural to carry it. It's not very big, he doesn't flaunt it and I have no idea what's in it. But I would guess it contains most of the things I have in my pockets.

In any case, the mystery of why men don't carry purses and why women do remains, at least for me, unresolved. I have not yet had the courage to experimentally carry a purse, and at this late stage in my life I don't think I'll try. But I do speculate about it now and then in an idle moment, like when I am searching in my pockets for all my necessaries first thing in the morning.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to The Courier.