I have a system, and if you’ve watched me leave the house, you’ll have seen me implement it: my strange little “tap my pelvis four times” dance is actually a sophisticated check that I’ve got everything I need. Whenever I go out, I like to double-check that I’ve got with me my wallet, keys, mobile phone, and change, and this helps to ensure it. My change goes in my back left pocket, and I know it’s there because of the jangling sound it makes. I’ve left the house before and felt like I must have forgotten something because I only had a single coin, before realising why. In my back right pocket go my keys: the RFID keyfob and large keyring I use gives them a distinctive shape, and tapping them to ensure they’re there seems a little overkill when I should be able to feel that they’re there anyway, but it’s a useful reminder of a habit. My wallet goes in my front left pocket, and my phone goes in my front right, screen facing outwards.
That’s a pretty unusual configuration, I’m aware – many men keep their wallets in their back pockets, keep their phones’ screens facing inwards (to protect them) and so on, but there is a system. I’m right handed, and as a result I find it easiest to rifle through my wallet for notes, cards etc. using my right hand, holding it with my left, so the wallet goes on my left-hand side. It’s also rather big and chunky – I carry a lot of cards and stuff in it – and keeping it in by back pocket would make it difficult to sit down in places where I’d want to keep it in my pocket – like at bus stops, for instance. Having put this first lot of money on the left, I keep my change on the same side. It just feels right: in addition, the weight of my wallet plus change is approximately equal to the weight of my keys plus phone, which makes me feel balanced.
By reaching for my keys with my right, I’m able to use my (obviously more agile) right hand to identify the key I need by touch, usually before I’ve brought the ring round into eyesight, which is a simple efficiency improvement over putting them on the left. I’d honestly prefer it if the RFID sensors in my office building were bum-high, so that I could open doors with my arse and spend even less time fiddling with keys. Perhaps I can persuade the building management that the sensors are too high to be accessible to people in wheelchairs, and get them to lower them. I’m sure that my bottom is at a different height to that of other people, but I don’t care: that can jump or crouch or whatever – I’m the one who came up with the arse-key idea anyway.
As far as protecting the screen of my phone by facing it inwards; my mobile phones get quite a beating at the best of times, and they tend not to last long enough to be at risk of screen breakage. If I had a touch screen device, I might treat it somewhat differently, but this will do for now. It also affords me a couple of benefits: firstly, the lighting up of the screen when the phone rings can be seen through my trousers, which means that even in loud environments, odds are good that somebody will notice that my phone is ringing, and, hopefully, I’ll correctly interpret their pointing at my crotch as meaning that somebody is trying to get in touch with me, and not that – for example – a snake has climbed my leg and is about to bite off my right testicle. Another benefit is that, with a little practice, I’ve learned to be able to press the “reject call” button through a jeans pocket: ignoring people without even looking at the screen.
Perhaps this behaviour seems a little OCD; well, maybe so, and maybe I’ve hammed it up a little bit here anyway, but it works very well for me. Except when it doesn’t.
This morning, I went downstairs and put three of my four items in my pockets. I’d just woken from a dream in which I was left-handed, and as a result, I ended up sleepily putting my things into the pockets on the wrong side (don’t ask how I ended up doing that: instead, ask about the time I dreamt in four-dimensional space – that’s a better story). Realising that I’d not put my phone in my pocket, and wondering where I’d put it, I picked up the landline handset and dialed my number. I heard the phone ring from near the coffee table, so I hung up and started rummaging around there. No sign of it. So I pick up the landline again and dial again: now it sounds like it’s to the right of the coffee table: maybe it’s on the dining table, under some of Claire‘s revision or something? I hang up and look. No sign of it…
Eventually I found it. It was in my pocket. The missing item was not my phone but my wallet, which was still on my desk.
I need a phone that doesn’t feel like a wallet in my pocket.