The Laptop Bag

In college, I never owned a bag for my laptop. It was carelessly thrown into my backpack with Locke and Rich and Organic Chemistry textbooks. Power cords tangled with headphone cords. Scratches and pen marks littered the casing. It wasn’t until I started to commute from Brooklyn to Greenwich, CT in the winter of 2006 that I bought a real one. Gotten at a proper office store, it was pink and resembled a large, structured purse. It knocked into people on the 4 train. It sat on the floor of the Metro North. Its straps dug into my shoulder. I loved it. It made me feel like the grownup I barely was.

But it always seemed a bit fake to me. I was playing at a game. And when that job ended, the bag settled into the corner of my apartment stowing bills and miscellaneous papers. It has continued to do so for over two and a half years. It wasn’t until the early months of 2008 that I found its more appropriate replacement.


Yes, it is sitting atop The Coat. It's having an early showing due to the unseasonably warm weather. My green, swing coat peeked out briefly on Sunday.

Like almost all of the favorites, I happened upon this bag by chance. Temping in Manhattan, I had been sent on an errand to pick up a package at the post office. Through no fault of my own, I had to return to our office sans package and then once again head out to the post office. I was annoyed by the second trip, and on my way back with package finally in tow, I naughtily stopped into Brooklyn Industries.

The Laptop Bag was on final sale, and so I spent a good ten minutes considering it. Did I need it? I had a perfectly good laptop bag collecting dust next to my slowly growing mountain of fashion magazines. But the strap on this one looked more comfortable. The pockets were more accessible. Its slimness would make knocking people out on the subway virtually impossible, but it could probably still pack a punch if the need ever arose to use it in such a way. And the pattern made it youthful. I wouldn’t appear to be quite so serious. I tended to have a problem with that.

I still do.

I bought it and snuck back into the office where I hid the shopping bag in the bottom of a desk drawer. I carried the new bag out as if I had had it with me the entire time. No one noticed a thing.