Remember when the worst thing you found at the bottom of your purse was a melted tube of lipstick? My how times have changed! After a recent encounter of the gross kind, I asked several mommyfriends what’s the nastiest thing they’ve found lurking in their bag. Check out the top rankariffic offenders:

_Curdled Delight. During our trip to Missouri, we kept smelling something in our hotel room. Even Logan proclaimed: “Something smells funky dunky.” I searched and searched only to find 8 oz of curdled chocolate milk oozing into the bottom of the diaper bag. It looked like brown cottage cheese as it had been in the back of a hot car for seven hours, and sat in the room overnight. Tasty.

_One Bad Burrito. Driving around for days, Jane kept catching a whiff of… something. She scoured her purse, diaper bag and the car. Nothing revealed itself as the source for the putrid smell and over the days, the odor grew. Finally she peeked in the compartment of her door and wrapped like a tight burrito, she found a molded poopy diaper.

_Surf’s Up. Pauline and her family love the beach and she’s used to reaching in her bag for sunblock and pulling out congealed granola bars, melted M&Ms and brown bananas. But even she was surprised when a lollipop completely melted out of the wrapper, off the stick and onto loose change, forming a gnarly patty of sticky pennies.

_ Pick a Card, Any Card. Well, Maybe Not. Rebecca’s a journalist who was out on a night assignment and brought her backpack that she previously used on outings with her daughters. Someone asked for her business card, she jammed her hand inside the bag and splotch! It landed in mush. She stammered that somehow her cards got wet, made a quick exit and dumped out her bag. She’s still not sure what the mush was, it could have been rotten plums, but she’s glad it was too dark to really identify the goop.

There were scores of other stories, though the most popular was about curdled milk (including one poor mom who was on a business trip when she discovered the spoiled milk spilled in the bottom of her fancy bag!) Other common funktafied tales involved moldy bread, melted string cheese, poop-crusted onesies, half-eaten lollipops, the first locks of hair, an old waffle in a napkin, bagels so old they’re masquerading as rocks and fuzzy black bananas.

I’m sure we’re all going to be finding many gross things for years to come, but it’s good to know we’re not alone. 

(All names have been changed to protect the innocent.)