Age Difference

[Smartboy]

I know that by writing what I am about to write, I am "really" scraping the bottom of the barrell, but I feel "determined" to stimulate some more conversation about this show! On January 6th, I started a thread titled "Purses". On this post I pointed out three episodes in which Katie was carrying a purse and Julie was not. I think it would be interesting if different posters (including myself) would kick around some theories about why this is and what the writers were thinking when they made these episodes. At the start of the series, Katie was supposed to be seventeen and Julie fifteen. Even though the birthday's of these two girls were never revealed, I think that it is safe to say that they were about two years apart. This being the case, Katie had two more years in which it would be appropriate for her to wear makeup and two more years in which she was allowed to go to places by herself and thus need her own house key. Being that neither girl did much driving until "much" later in the series, needing a place her her driver's licence or her cars keys would not really be an issue. In any event, it is possible that the age difference is what put Katie in a possition in which taking a purse in hand on her way out the door had become second nature. What I would like to read from other fans is whether they think that you could make a case that there was anything other than age that made Katie more of a purse-carrier than Julie. Incendially, age can also play into why Samantha (to my knowlege) "never" carried a purse! Being that when the show began she was only thirteen and that is at the "very" beginning of the time in which using a purse would have "any" degree of appropriateness! However, given that by the time that the sereis ended, she was collage-age, this nw longer served as an explanation. What do other fans think of any of these observations?