Pockets!
     That's right, pockets---wonderful things. A person can't have too many pockets. I don't know how women get along with them.

     Of course, to have pockets and use them means that you are not that concerned with your physical profile. It means that you are secure enough not to be bothered by looking a little lumpy. I guess that’s why women’s clothes don’t usually have pockets as it would certainly break up the natural curvy lines that God gave them, or that they’ve acquired from too much good cooking. Thus they have to carry handbags that look as though they could be smuggling the crown jewels, with maybe the jeweler attached.

     According to my information, man’s early development depended on the invention of pockets. This information was hard to come by and took considerable time to dig up. A guy named Ug, who sewed a pocket in his Saber-tooth cat coat, developed the first known pocket. His only problem was that he got the sequence out of order and hadn’t removed the coat from the cat, so we’ve heard no more about Ug and that first pocket. His wife clearly remembers telling Ug to put the cat out, but of course, “He never listened to me about anything.”

     It was only a few more years before pockets became a necessity in men's clothing. And that’s not as easy as it may seem. Just try putting a pocket in a loan cloth. It can get tricky.

     Enough with the early history.

     When I leave the house for a casual errand I have available at least six to ten pockets, all of which I need as I’m not lugging a small suitcase around and calling it a purse.

     What brought this to mind was a guy I saw recently. I was standing in line at the Post Office. There was a man at one of the work counters, preparing something for mailing. He was wearing cargo pants, which gave him at least six pockets. He had a jacket that had four zippered pockets on the outside, and it appeared there were two pockets on each side of the inside. He also had two pockets in his shirt. So he had a total of sixteen pockets to work with.

     To work with numerous pockets demands that a man keep his wits about him. He’s got to know where each item should go and then remember where he actually put those items. If a man is slapdash about putting stuff away, then it is the equivalent of a woman rooting around in her purse while muttering, “I know I put those keys in here someplace.”

     Back to my guy in the Post Office with his sixteen pockets. On the counter in front of him he had several dollar bills, some change, some stamps, a pen, and some envelopes.

     When I first noticed him, he had just finished putting stamps on the envelopes and needed to put the left over stamps away. Where should they go? He tried five pockets before he found an old envelope, which seemed to be the storage place for unused stamps. Four of these pockets were zippered closed so he had to unzip each pocket, rummage around, and zip it back up.

     Once the stamps were safe, he had to take care of the money which only took three pockets before finding his little change purse. Once the coins were safe he put the purse away. I noticed that the change purse went back in a different pocket than where it had originated. I knew immediately that I was watching an amateur or someone extremely organizationally challenged. This guy was doomed to be forever patting pockets while trying to locate something.

     All this time he was talking to himself. As time went on he seemed to be getting more and more frantic. His speech became more audible and he was getting a panicky look around his eyes. His reaching, unzipping, zipping, patting, and sticking his hands in pockets, was getting jerky and uncoordinated. 

     Then it was time for the dollar bills. He found his wallet on the second pocket. He got a positive mark for that.

     Now the money and the stamps were safely sequestered and it seemed that he needed something else.

     He started looking for what turned out to be a stub of a pencil. This turned into a ten-pocket search, but was finally located. Next, he needed what turned out to be a piece of paper from which he copied something on one of the envelopes. This turned into a nine-pocket search.

     It wasn’t like this guy was doing all this at a leisurely pace. His hands were flying around his person like he was fighting off a swarm of killer bees.

     Finally, everything was back in some pocket, not necessarily where it originated, and he was ready to mail his envelopes. He looked around, saw me watching him, gave me a weak smile, wiped the foam from the corners of his lips, and headed toward the mail slots.

     Like I said, pockets are wonderful things.