One of my favorite novels features a main character who decides she's going to wear a fishing vest when she travels, just so she'll have plenty of pockets in which to store her stuff.
Now, it's important to note that, at some point in the book, her husband decides to have her committed. Which is not to say that the clothing idea is a bad one, or indicative of mental illness. In other words, she may be crazy, but wearing a fishing vest in public, just for the storage, might not be.
I came to this conclusion while I was sitting in my car, trying to figure out where I was going to put everything I now need to Sherpa around just to make it through my day.
This is not a decision I come to lightly. For one thing, I don't really fish. At least not enough to require special clothing (or a $400 cooler. As if someone actually does.). And I don't even wear cargo shorts, which means pocket options are not high of my list when clothes shopping. So a vest that is all pockets, all the time, just doesn't seem like that good an idea.
But there are moments ...
Take, for instance, my daily arrival at work. Now, I'm sort of a tall person and, for reasons I won't get into here (because columns don't grow on trees), I drive a kind of small car. Once I'm in, not so bad. It's the embarking and disembarking that kind of makes me look like I'm being ejected in slow motion.
It's work, so I've got my much-heavier-than-it-needs-to-be-unless-I-was-transporting-gold messenger bag/briefcase. And I've got my badge. That's the one that gets me in the building, not the one that means I get to round up evildoers so the nice folks of this quiet town can live in peace, there, Pilgrim. Big difference.
I've got my sunglasses or regular glasses, since I need both but can only wear one at a time because I don't want to look like one of those odd ladies with too many cats and visors.
And I've got my cellphone, which could go in the bag, except I might get a call and don't want to start staggering around the parking lot trying to get it out and looking like I'm fighting off a swarm of bees.
And I've got car keys, which have to go somewhere, and, for want of a better location, will probably go between my teeth. Which reminds me of a dog retrieving a tennis ball. Except, if I were one of my dogs, I'd get halfway to the office, forget what I was doing, drop the keys and go chase the possibility of an imaginary squirrel. Again, a non-tree-grown column for a later date.
And then there's the coffee. Because, it's morning, and well, therefore, there's coffee. As the poster I read recently said, "I love you more than coffee. Just don't make me prove it."
It's also an indication of priorities that, when it appears I'm losing my grip and I'm going to have to make some split-second decisions on what's going to hit the ground, the last possibility, up to and including me, is the coffee. I mean, that's what insurance is for, right?
So, with all this stuff (loosely) in my possession and under my control (sort of), I'm going to try to climb out of a doorway roughly the size of a Chilean mine rescue shaft.
Most mornings I make it. Others ... not so much.
On those mornings when de-carring takes on a kinetic quality, I look more like I washed up on shore than exited an automobile. I'm strangling myself with my bag strap while swallowing my keys, stuffing my phone somewhere in the neighborhood of my jacket and pulling out stamps, pens, pencils, business cards and a half-consumed fortune cookie I've stashed in my bag (it reads: "Find peace in simplicity." Apparently, the ancient Chinese are all checked out on irony.) And it's all getting in the way of trying to find my badge and holding my coffee above the fray like a knight would hold the Holy Grail. That's when I think, "You know, I could use a few more pockets here. And some oxygen."
Chances are, I'm not going with the fishing vest. I mean, for one thing ... no. And for another, I don't really want to give the impression I'm frisking myself when I try to locate whatever critically important but obviously hard-to-find item I've got to have.
You see, in my world, the only thing worse than having lots of places to put things is having lots of places to lose things. And inviting that kind of trouble first thing in the morning? Well, that's just crazy.
Commentary on 04/01/2016