Well, the warm weather is finally here and it looks like it may stick around for a while now. I sure hope so, I mean come on!! It's Memorial Day, ( a week early, but so what? right? ) I'm ready to wear shorts every day and get in the pool after work and swim for an hour or so. So this brings out my subject, Pockets.
I was digging my shorts out last night and I realized that more than half of my current shorts are the "Yuppie Summer Uniform", cargo shorts. As I looked at the various styles of cargo shorts in front of me I noticed that there were a variety of pocket styles, but also a varying number of pockets. After counting them, the pair with the most pockets, ( How come shorts and pants are called a pair? You only have one ass to put in them. You have 2 arms on a shirt and they aren't referred to as a "pair of shirts"...) has 10 Pockets! What the hell is someone in SHORTS going to do with 10 pockets? I mean aren't you supposed to travel lite when you're wearing shorts?
I understand the extra pockets if you are hiking or playing tourist. You need a place for extra camera batteries, and perhaps a bottle of water, but let's be honest here, You get much stuff in the pockets of your cargo shorts and you will need both suspenders and a belt to keep them from falling down every 5 steps! Just going through my pockets this afternoon, I had my keyring, a chapstick, a lighter and my pocket knife in one pocket, and money and a debit card in the other. That's it! I had my cell phone and a pen in my t-shirt pocket, like I always do. Later, when I was mowing the lawn, I put the cell down into one of the leg pockets so I could keep the iPod in the shirt, but still and all, nothing groundbreaking or extra special there.
That's just me though, most guys are like little kids. I have never seen a kid with a lot of pockets who didn't HAVE to fill them all up with something. Ask any mother who has done laundry what she has found in a kids pockets. Girls and boys alike. Anything from the missing diamond ring, to a dead snake, there is just no telling, but I'm sure the hands down leader in items found in kid's pockets is rocks. What kid has not looked down at the ground on occasion and found a "pretty" rock they they want to take home to momma? I don't think it's possible to take a 2-4 year old for a walk in the country without them bringing at least a couple rocks home with them. My youngest nephew was a grand collector of rocks. Walking down the beach with him one day, ( Yes, some our beaches here in NY have some rocks, you wanna make something of it? ) and as we walked, he collected. Before we were half way back to the picnic site, his pockets were overflowing and he was walking with both hands holding up his britches! His mom thought he looked cute in cargo shorts. Yeah, and he looked even cuter with his Spider-man undies visible, because his pants wouldn't stay up, loaded with rocks. I was afraid he was gonna break a toe when they fell down!
Men at least don't generally collect rocks anymore, unless they are geologists or just a little unstable. Men collect electronics and tools. More pockets to carry more crap. Cell phone, GPS, camera, iPod, Flash drive. What else can we cram in there? Wallet, keyring, pocket knife, extra batteries, extra memory card for camera. Maybe a flask or a couple bottles of brew. Hey, might get hungry later how about a slim jim or a granola bar? Don't want to get dehydrated, keep a water bottle in there too. Or if you're a pro, a sports bottle. Spare pair of earbuds in case you meet a bud and want to share tunes, or maybe for picking up chicks? Never know when you may need to fix something so don't forget the toolbox from the garage! That's cool!
Think men are the only cuprits? Think again. The mommy patrol has a million uses for cargo shorts too. Who hasn't seen a soccer mom chasing after the kids with a kleenex? where do you think she had it stashed? In her pocket!! and where will it go when she is done with it? If there isn't a trashcan nearby and she isn't a total heathen, it will go back into a pocket! The younger the kids, the more stuff mommy will likely have in her pockets. (Purses are so passé these days) There will be baby asprin, wetnaps, a juicebox or two. Probably a spare pair of undies for each child if they are just recently potty trained or still in training. There will be at least a couple band-aids maybe some hand sanitizer, (If not a full first-aid kit if she's a worrier) and then the usual suspects, the cell and the keys with the clicker for the door locks and security system, some folding money and at least one credit card. She probably has some snacks in there too, cracker packs or maybe some cookie packs. You know how cranky kids get when their blood sugar drops!
I guess it's great if your a mugger, because with more pockest people are carrying around much more stuff to rip off. It's like a quickmart for muggers! Electronics to hock, and money to use immediately, how can you go wrong? I just hope the mugger isn't in a hurry, because they still have to get through the layers of fasteners to get the stuff out of the pockets! You don't actually carry anything in there that you would need in a "real" emergency, because if you have to get those pockets open, doing it in a hurry just ain't happening, unless you have straight velcro. Zippers, snaps and/or buttons, backed by velcro is what most of mine have. I have a pair where the button is hidden under a little flap, if it was a matter of life and death to get something out of that pocket in a hurry, I'm gonna die. It takes at least a minute to manipulate the button around to open those pockets. I challege any good pickpocket to show me that they can get into them without me knowing about it! Velcro is great deterent to pickpockets I think, it talks and they hate that!
Give me my old cutoffs! When I was a kid, mom would take a pair of jeans that I wore the knees out of and cut the legs off above the knee and I had shorts! ( they were almost never even! lol) A few washes and the ends would fray out and then you looked "right", fresh cut shorts always looked so dorky! Too many pockest just complicates life and on shorts it's a travesty, because shorts weather is the time when you should be enjoying simple things. Who wants to have to empty the electronics before starting a squirt-gun war on a hot July day? Not me, but I still do. It's just no fun turning the garden hose on your buddy when you have to replace his cell phone and his iPod that was stuffed into a back stash pocket of his cargo shorts!
Enough with the pockets, if you can't live with 4 pocket shorts, get a purse!
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