Empty Your Pockets

The topic of this blog hit me as I was taking my dog for our ritual 6am morning stroll down poop alley. Pockets. You can find them on most garments, as a feature of office supplies, in your car, the back of an airplane seat, and on various other mundane, everyday objects. They're used for storing things, collecting small debris, and capturing your attention at 3 second intervals like a Morse code message.

For this particular occasion, the pockets were my sweatpants pockets storing my doggie bag and gate keys. These pants pockets aren't particularly deep, they are rather wide, and they are angled just a tad bit downward for ease of placing your hands in them.

Good for hand occupation, bad for transporting miscellany.

While the plastic grocery sack would be an unfortunate loss - leaving a steamer on the lawn for the neighbors to step in, accompanied by angry stares from those looky-loos that think I'm an irresponsible pet owner not picking it up... - what I would really be bummed to lose would be the keys. They are my only access back into my gate and they cannot be duplicated.

Quite often I use my pockets to transport or carry important items that I wouldn't want to lose. Which is why, every time I'm using my pocket to store something, I imagine it falling out, the ramifications of that event, and then I put my hand in my pocket to make sure the contents are secure/still there. A mental role call to calm my fears. This event happens frequently until I finally decide to take out the item and hold it in my hand until I get where I'm going.

I'd say most things in my pockets, depending on the pocket dimension and build obviously, have about a 60/40 chance of falling out, and if they did fall out, I'd say there would be around a 40% chance that I wouldn't notice. So... just putting anything in my pocket is almost a 25% chance that I'd lose it. I'd say these stats apply to most of the general population so either pockets have evolved to the function of a lonely place to keep your hands on occasion, or they are a representation of the older, more care-free days where people were OK with the chance that they'd lose a 1/4 of their valuables kept in pockets.

Anyway, I'll take the risk for convenience. Literally and actually using my pockets for more than my hands.