What Do You Have In Your Pockets? [NOT 1/3/24]

Picking Hubby's Pockets
Picking Hubby's Pockets / 1923 / Exhibit Supply Company / Stereographic Photo / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2023638710

Hands! Knife! String Or Nothing!

Bilbo Baggins famously cheated at a game of riddles by wondering to himself out loud what he had in his pockets.

There is an interesting book about pockets by Hannah Carlson reviewed here by Hua Hsu. It talks about things I vaguely knew, but never really grasped. For instance, there’s a notable difference in size between pockets in clothing for women and men, even in similar clothes. Pockets in jeans for men, unfairly, are much bigger than the pockets in jeans for women, to the point where trying to put a phone in a pair of Levis is often not an option for women.

The traditional rationale has been that women don’t need to carry as much stuff as men, which of course is nonsense. Two centuries or so ago it was argued that men like tailors needed pockets for their trade, but somehow women, who sewed just as much as men, did not. Even uniforms for WACs during the Second World War lacked pockets.

How Do You Carry Your Stuff? What Do You Carry?

So what about you, Deadsplinterpackers? What do you carry with you, and how do you carry it? I always leave the house with a quick patdown of my pockets to make sure I have my wallet, phone and keys, and I’ll often have change and a mask too. I used to have a Swiss Army knife on my keychain, but I gave up when metal detectors started springing up in unexpected places after 9/11.

When I go jogging, I have a little velcroed pouch attached to my shoelaces for a key, ID tag, and a few bucks in case of emergency.

It’s a little twist that women are cheated on pockets but at least get better looking options for socially-acceptable bags when they go about. If I need to carry more, I tend to go with a backpack like I’m some 16 year old hauling a trig textbook. Once I need to carry a water bottle, a pen, a bunch of tissues, glasses case, and other basics, my pockets get overloaded and it’s either a backpack, an even worse looking fanny pack, or a messenger bag which is not terribly comfortable. Maybe someday manpurses will take off.

Antonin Scalia, being a sexist pig, wrote a ruling that police searches of women’s purses during a traffic stop were somehow not as invasive as a search of a man’s wallet. He probably never bothered once during his marriage to consider what might be in his wife’s purse, but even I know they’re generally private places.

So what do you take with you? And how do you carry it, whether it’s pockets, purse, bag, or secret compartment in your hat?

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28 Comments

  1. i do not leave the house without my backpack

    holding water, keys and a towel…..and paracetamol

    coz you know… you are going to need that towel for breaking the window when you lose your key again

    trust me…its so much better than smashing a window bare fisted

    the paracetamol is for the splinters as you lie to your insurance company about getting broken into

        • …ummm…speaking as a fellow british-enough-that-it-shows type…we’re not always the greatest judges of the deserve part when applied reflexively…just sayin’…&…since I’m late to the party I might add @farscythe?

          …sometimes it helps (I find, anyway) to approach the whole question as obliquely as possible…& as it happens I think there might be a quote for that…honestly…douglas adams’ contribution to the british psyche really ought to be the sort of thing they canonize people for, really…if we had a slightly different perspective about what constitutes a miracle we probably would, even…anyway

          Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

          …plus…something…towel/jumper/scarf/waterfproofs/whatever…is often handy for keeping things from banging together inside when you’re toting the thing around

          …seems perfectly sensible, really…it’s not like you’re “going equipped”…which is/was a thing…& I know my father, who is very much the law-abiding sort…actually stepped back the sort of thing he used to consider EDC after the constable explained to him that he looked less like a boy-scout that a B&E exponent from their point of view…& that was years back when it took more than it does these days…& was basically a bigger version of this sort of thing?

          https://countycomm.com/products/titanium-widgy-bar-multi-pack

          …pretty sure it was the pry bar in the boot of the car with the spare tyre that tripped him up…which is why along with the guns & the bigger-than-seems-entirely-necessary knives (& the various batons & kubotan things some people post in those sorts of pictures) one of the ones I’m almost as surprised to see is the breaker bars?

          https://edcgear.co.uk/products/countycomm-eod-robotics-breacher-bar-titanium

          …youtube served me an ad the other day for a natty-looking gizmo with a fired bolt deal designed to punch through even reinforced safety glass on the basis most people can’t break a car window & if you only have electric ones & take the car for a swim you might want to…if the electrics fry themselves & all…so…all in all at his age it’s probably best he hasn’t been wandering about with that old clasp knife with the solid iron hoof-pick on the back…but…you know…not like either of you had one of these?

          https://edcgear.co.uk/products/countycomm-8-ti-hooligan-forced-entry-tool-titanium

          …oh, brave new world…that has such wonders in it?

  2. I carry wallet, keys, and a comb. I don’t use the comb hardly ever. But I still carry it. People are utterly bemused when I produce a comb. That’s because they are unkempt.

    I used to carry a pocket knife that was given to me by a very dear friend who is now deceased. In his honor, I keep it honed to razor sharpness. Literally. I could shave with it.

    But I hit a metal detector at the DMV in Broward County, FL. This was after 9/11 when everyone went insane and they put metal detectors everywhere. The security guard freaked out (it’s a pocket knife but it’s not small). He was going to throw it in the trash and then I freaked out. I took it back to my truck and left it there and went back through the line. I stopped carrying it everywhere after that. I can’t bear to lose it.

    There was the incident when I brought a Batarang to a show by a Broadway touring company, but I’ve gone on too long.

  3. Keys in one pocket, cell & wallet in the other.  Unless I am wearing a jacket, then everything goes in there.  Kleenex is added if allergy season & utility knife if I am working (always need to cut something, right?)

  4. Pockets? What pockets? So handbags always, just large enough to hold my wallet, phone, Kindle, and a lipstick.

     

    I used to like bigger bags, totes, etc., but now the smaller the better as long as it holds the aforementioned items.

    My days of ensuring that I had snacks, juice, small toys, and other assorted child detritus are long over. And my days of leaving home for work are also over (cheers for remote), so I need not worry about key cards, parking passes, binders, laptops, etc.

      • I was early on in the SAHD thing & used to always get that judging look from moms & other dads for carrying a diaper bag.  I didn’t care, I was there for my girls & didn’t care about you.  If your kids were not demon spawn, my girls would play with you but if not,  we would avoid or a few times I gave some much needed parenting advice.  That was frowned upon by my wife & rarely required. I can give some terrifying dirty looks to kids that have parents that don’t give a shit what their kids do at the park & just want to talk on their phones.

        • The trick was always being able to keep an eye on the kids while doing something else.

          I could manage that with one kid. I had infinite respect for those who could manage two or three at a time. I think it comes down to a sense of anticipation kind of like a mountain bie0ker who can sense the bumps downhill even before going around the curve.

  5. O/T, but meanwhile over at CNN:

    Looking to shift CNN’s focus to digital as cord-cutting continues to hammer cable TV, [Mark] Thompson [former head of the BBC and head of the “New York Times” for something like four months, to no discenrible effect] outlined a five-part plan — “Building our digital future,” “A global integrated multimedia news operation,” “Future-proofing TV production,” “Developing new sources of revenue” and “Communication and culture.”

    I love garbagespeak like this, because I don’t work in corporate America any more. When I did, and this kind of sewage washed up against me, I used to grind my molars so hard…How did the folks at CNN take this?

    “It’s a five-point plan to make five-point plans,” said the media executive. “In other words, there is no plan, but we are really planning to make lots of plans. And rest assured, there are lots of people overseeing the planning to make plans. And Mark is overseeing all of the people planning to make plans. So don’t worry. We’ve got this totally under control!”

     

  6. What pockets?

    In the purse is wallet, phone, glasses, keys, chapstick, lipgloss, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, nail file, bandaids, mechanical pencil, and usually a few napkins and Costco receipts.

  7. Also CNN could do surge pricing for news. Charge more for war/crisis/Trump time and “less” for peace or non Trump US administrations. They can ask Wendy’s how that went…

  8. …if it were possible to campaign for more pockets = better I would probably have joined the union by now…although…that said…I have yet to buy something from the ScotteVest lot…so…it’s not like I’m *really* trying

    …so…that part depends pretty much on what collection/configuration of those I have on

    …then what I expect to be unsurprised if I have to do before I get home…& since I’ve spent enough time in manchester to expect one of those things to be being outside in the rain even if I’m in a desert or on a tropical island…either there’s more pockets in the waterproof or the waterproof is in a bag of some sort

    …if it’s the bag, thing…jokes have been made about the tardis-like properties involved when it comes to “hang on, I might have something that could be helpful” stuff that might be in there…if it seems like I might need it…it goes in…if I don’t need that space for something I’ll definitely need the next time…it probably stays put

    …these days…it has been joked more that once that if I had to I could probably survive in the wild with just the one bag…but I’m pretty sure desert island discs wouldn’t let me claim it was my one luxury item…it has also been said..by friends in front of their spouses…that if the zombie apocalypse of hollywood’s imaginings were to happen…they’d be headed round mine…which makes me sound like the preppers from tremors…& honestly, I’m really not?

    …but…to get back to the original question…wallet/keys/phone…probably at least the odd tissue/unused napkin from last time I got one with a coffee or whatever…”the makings” for cigarettes (in a tin…no prizes for guessing what sort)…&…technically I guess it’s a second wallet…one of those tyvek paper ones…that means I can get way more than a pocket’s worth of stuff in a pocket without it being a nightmare…so…let’s see…what’s in that?

    …by the looks of it…currently…some rolled/folded plastic bags of various sizes from dog-related to groceries…a small pencil & an extendable ballpoint pen…a few paperclips & bits of odd wire that have been used to poke in various tech-y recesses to hit reset buttons or pop open sim-trays or clean the blockage out of a charging port or whatever…one of those stupid free emergency sewing kit things…a sort of slightly thicker-than-a-credit-card thing someone gave me that in theory could be turned into a stand to hold a phone or a tablet at various angles but that I’m realizing I’ve never used that I can recall so it’s mostly just a bulky divider in practice…a pocket ashtray…a lighter…& a smaller back up emergency lighter for when you realize you forgot to refill the lighter or the flint packs up & if you don’t duck out for a smoke someone’s gonna regret it

    …oh…& the charging case for the earbuds if I’m heading out the door, I guess…& since covid…probably a mask tucked into something to stop it getting grubby in the pocket…& some of that hand sanitizer stuff

    …typing it up makes me feel like I ought to resemble one of the tinker/pack-rat things from the dark crystal…but I don’t look like I’m carrying noticeably more than the people I pass on the street…it’s not like the pockets are wearing out at the seams or anything…nothing bursts when I sit down or anything?

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