I was attempting to put my wallet into the inside pocket of my coat the other day. I was having great difficulty doing so due to the size of my wallet. It’s not that the pocket is too small for the wallet, it’s more that the wallet has grown too big for the pocket. Normally I would keep it in my pants pocket but it was too big to carry there without needing suspenders to keep my pants up.
My first real wallet came in kit form. It was made of a few slabs of leather that I had to emboss with the embossing tool that came with the kit. The instructions showed the location or the places to emboss the wallet and how to do it using a hammer. It was kind of like paint-by-number leathercraft. The pieces were then stitched together with leather cord.
I didn’t really need a wallet back then. I carried no license. No credit cards. No business cards. No cash. Well I did carry five bucks once and a while, mostly after my birthday, but that’s about it.
During my mid-twenties I drove a delivery truck for a living. For the best part of my day I was seated behind the wheel. It was during this time that I discovered that keeping my wallet in my back pocket was causing great discomfort in my lower back. From that point on, whenever I climbed into a vehicle I would transfer my wallet from my back to my front pocket.
I read somewhere that the safest place to keep your wallet was in your front pocket. It is understandably easier for pickpockets to lift your wallet from your back pocket as opposed to your front. Now the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is hardly a place for a pickpocket to ply his trade. I would think it would be easier to be a banana farmer here. There just aren’t the crowded situations a pickpocket works best in. When I was going to be in a crowd for an extended length of time, perhaps it was a trade show in Detroit, I decided to put my wallet in my front pocket and since that time I have kept it there.
Now I am looking for an alternative to my front pocket. When I have it in one of my front pockets along with my cell phone and my always-growing ring of keys it looks like I am wearing poorly fitting riding breeches, making me look like a reject from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The easiest thing to do might be to simply get rid of the most of the stuff in my wallet, but this is becoming increasingly hard to do. Sure, there are the easy things to get rid of: receipts, scraps of paper with notes on them, business cards handed out by salesmen I will never buy anything from, but after that it gets difficult to decide what stays home.
My licenses must stay. My membership cards should stay. I might need my debit card. I should keep at least a few of my own business cards. Insurance cards, discount cards, and a host of other important doo-dahs have managed to infiltrate the darkest corners of my wallet all adding to its girth.
It would seem that I now have the exact opposite problem that I had with the wallet of my youth. Instead of not having enough to put into a wallet, I have too much. Unfortunately for me there is never too much cash in it. I still have five bucks to put in it every now and then, mostly after my birthday.
Waye Braver can be contacted on Facebook or by e-mail at waye@braverinstitute.com
Visit the Braver Institute at www.braverinsitute.com
My first real wallet came in kit form. It was made of a few slabs of leather that I had to emboss with the embossing tool that came with the kit. The instructions showed the location or the places to emboss the wallet and how to do it using a hammer. It was kind of like paint-by-number leathercraft. The pieces were then stitched together with leather cord.
I didn’t really need a wallet back then. I carried no license. No credit cards. No business cards. No cash. Well I did carry five bucks once and a while, mostly after my birthday, but that’s about it.
During my mid-twenties I drove a delivery truck for a living. For the best part of my day I was seated behind the wheel. It was during this time that I discovered that keeping my wallet in my back pocket was causing great discomfort in my lower back. From that point on, whenever I climbed into a vehicle I would transfer my wallet from my back to my front pocket.
I read somewhere that the safest place to keep your wallet was in your front pocket. It is understandably easier for pickpockets to lift your wallet from your back pocket as opposed to your front. Now the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is hardly a place for a pickpocket to ply his trade. I would think it would be easier to be a banana farmer here. There just aren’t the crowded situations a pickpocket works best in. When I was going to be in a crowd for an extended length of time, perhaps it was a trade show in Detroit, I decided to put my wallet in my front pocket and since that time I have kept it there.
Now I am looking for an alternative to my front pocket. When I have it in one of my front pockets along with my cell phone and my always-growing ring of keys it looks like I am wearing poorly fitting riding breeches, making me look like a reject from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The easiest thing to do might be to simply get rid of the most of the stuff in my wallet, but this is becoming increasingly hard to do. Sure, there are the easy things to get rid of: receipts, scraps of paper with notes on them, business cards handed out by salesmen I will never buy anything from, but after that it gets difficult to decide what stays home.
My licenses must stay. My membership cards should stay. I might need my debit card. I should keep at least a few of my own business cards. Insurance cards, discount cards, and a host of other important doo-dahs have managed to infiltrate the darkest corners of my wallet all adding to its girth.
It would seem that I now have the exact opposite problem that I had with the wallet of my youth. Instead of not having enough to put into a wallet, I have too much. Unfortunately for me there is never too much cash in it. I still have five bucks to put in it every now and then, mostly after my birthday.
Waye Braver can be contacted on Facebook or by e-mail at waye@braverinstitute.com
Visit the Braver Institute at www.braverinsitute.com
This piece first appeared in the March 20th, 2014 edition of the Pioneer Tribune, a weekly newspaper from Manistique, Michigan. Please visit their website: www.pioneertribune.com
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