Monday, September 19, 2011

Those Come In Handy

Sometimes in life, things are so commonplace that we begin to take them for granted. They've always been there and you begin to just expect them to always be there. It isn't until you reach for them and they aren't available to help you out that you realize what a big asset they have been in your life. I'm talking, of course, about pockets.

On Saturday morning I was doing a little yard work. As such I was wearing my typical yard work clothes of a ratty t-shirt and basketball shorts. About 95% of my way through the project I realized that I was going to come up short on materials. This could have gone one of two ways: either I could leave the project 95% complete, declare that I would finish the rest later and go take a shower, or I could hop in the car, run to the store, fight the crowd for the items I needed, come back to finish what I had started and then take a shower. Since I know that 'finishing this later' can be a rather loose contract for me, I decided to just get the damn thing over with and run to the store.

Now, given what happened last week when I went to run a quick errand only to discover that my truck decided that it was a great time to inform me my starter was broken, you would think that I would have learned my lesson about leaving the house without thinking things through and taking four extra seconds to make sure I had everything. But, I didn't. I just grabbed my keys, a $20 and headed out the door. It wasn't until I was in my car that I noticed the shorts I was wearing didn't have any pockets on them. That was kind of weird occurrence because most of my shorts have pockets, so I took it for granted. For a moment I thought about running back inside, but at least this time I remembered to wear socks, so I chocked it up as a victory and headed to Home Depot.

Now, for anyone who has never been to Home Depot you should know that the hardest thing to find in that store on a Saturday is an empty cart. And with only a couple things to buy and a strong urge to get back and finish my project, I was not in the mood to go hunting for one. That meant I was going to have to carry what I was buying. Fortunately the two items I needed were not heavy, but they were awkward. [Sidebar: it is really hard to carry any type of lumber without wanting to hit slow people with it. I've essentially got a lance in my hands, I suggest you move your discussion about whether or not it is time to re-do the bathroom to one side of the aisle or the other.] This was where I noticed that not having pockets available is really a bummer. Now I was juggling a long piece of wood, a bag of mulch, money and keys. I really could have used an extra pair of hands.

I got more than a few stares from people who seemed to be weighing whether they wanted to help me or if they would rather enjoy seeing me drop everything I was carrying. (I don't begrudge them in the least for not helping, as I have been in that same position and thought the person was an idiot for not having a cart.) It probably didn't help that I went to self-checkout and the bar code for the wood was on the top edge, which was rather inconvenient. The only saving grace of this whole experience was that my total came out to exactly $7.99. While I still had to balance the wood, the bag of mulch, the keys and money, at least the total wasn't something annoying like $8.04, leaving me to carry a handful of coins on top of all that. Another quick balancing act back to the car and I was on my way.

So, in closing, remind me never to do yard work in those shorts ever again. Also, the best inventions are often the most obvious. Seriously, the guy who thought up pockets was a frickin' genius.

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