The Written Podcast: A Different Pocket

If you’re like me, you have set pockets for your belongings, both in coats and bags alike. You don’t get a new coat and assign a certain pocket to your phone or wallet or keys, it is a natural selection. When you’re heading out, you put your new coat on, grab your phone, wallet and keys, and just put them in a pocket each. There’s no thinking process happening, that pocket is selected out of random.

However, when you’re repeating the process of getting ready, putting your coat on and grabbing your belongings, that random process doesn’t happen again. Instead, your wallet goes in the right side inside pocket, your phone goes in your left side outside pocket, and your keys go inside your left side inside pocket. That’s how that arrangement will happen every single time you wear that coat.

When I’m wearing my big winter long coat, my phone always lives inside the right side outside pocket. My wallet always lives inside my left side outside pocket, and my car keys lives in the side pocket on my bag. However, when at work, it’ll look silly to be wearing a long coat, so I switch the company jacket. I place my phone beside my computer, and my wallet inside my bag. That’s where all three remain throughout the day, and by the end when I switch back to my long coat, my wallet and phone are reinserted back into their rightful pockets.

When they are in those pockets, they cannot be lost. Whenever the phone rings, it’s in my right side outside pocket and I grab it instantly. Whenever I’m in a shop and need to pay for something, my wallet is in my left side outside pocket and I grab it instantly. When I need to unlock my car, my keys are in the small pouch attached to my bag and I grab them instantly. There’s no wasting time searching for them, they are always where they’re meant to be.

The random process of selecting a pocket for the first time isn’t always a pro, but can be a con as well. We’re not thinking when selecting our pockets, so we don’t think every time after, because we’re confident our belongings will be where they’re meant to be, and they always are… except when they aren’t. Occasionally, because we’re not thinking – and usually happens when we’re rushing around – we put our belongings in a different pocket. But we believe we’ve put them in the same pocket we always do.

When rushing around, of course you don’t want to forget anything. When you’ve grabbed your essentials, that’s it, you’re out of there. We don’t consciously check if our phone is in that pocket, we only know we’ve got it on our person. We don’t need to think about putting it in that pocket, because it’s always in there when we need it. So, when it comes to needing your phone, and you put your hand in that pocket only to discover your phone is not in there, instead of remaining calm and checking the other pockets, the first thing we do is panic. In that moment we discover your phone is not in that pocket, the immediate response is you’ve lost it. Except you know for a fact you picked it up when leaving, so where the heck could it have gone. You’ve lost your phone. The same happens with anything that has a naturally selected pocket. Wallet’s in the front pocket of your bag instead of the back, and instead of checking the front pocket, you start panicking and believe you’ve lost it. There may be a lot of money in that wallet, you need to cancel your credit cards and debit cards, order another one, muddle through until you get a new wallet, some cash together, wait for the new credit and debit cards to arrive through post… oh, wait, it’s in your front pocket… panic over. Move on.

I believed I lost my phone when leaving work. Due to being ill, last week was long and difficult. The mornings were a drag and I hardly slept. The only two things I thought about throughout last week was work and sleep. Due to hardly eating, I was suffering from lack of energy, and my hydration was running low due to not drinking enough to put back what I’ve lost via blowing my nose – disgusting I know.

On Thursday, wearing the official jacket when at work, I had one of those days where I was required to move away from my computer more than I was actually at it, so I decided to put my phone within my right hand side outside pocket, and zipped it up. That’s where it remained the entire day. I hadn’t had much use of it other than just checking up on things at lunch in the kitchen. When the end of the day finally arrived, my boss wanted a quick getaway due to needing to get to the gym on time – which is perfectly acceptable, but required us to have a speedy few moments of everyone getting themselves ready.

I threw my long coat over my arms, and put my notebooks within my right side outside pocket, making sure the clasp was snapped together. The official company jacket laid neatly over my arm, and my car keys in my hand. We all left. The boss locked the door and sped off in his car. As he was fighting through the traffic, I stopped dead in my tracks as I realised my phone was not in my long coat’s right side outside pocket, only my notebooks. Oh dear.

I remembered having my phone in the kitchen at work, so I went straight there first just in case I left on the side. I didn’t have any use of my phone the entire afternoon so I had no need to notice it wasn’t in my present company. It wasn’t there. Oh dear, oh dear. I asked the receptionist and no phone had been turned in. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

The office was completely locked, but someone other than my boss would have a key, so I wandered back in and asked for someone to unlock the door. They gave me specific instructions to where a spare key was kept, which I found instantly and stepped back inside the office… only to discover my phone was not there… now I was getting rather panicky.

Back in the main service area, the team manager suggested phoning my phone, just in case it had slipped anywhere in my bag and I just hadn’t noticed it. Makes sense, so he rung my phone and ultimately discovered it still in the company jacket’s right side outside pocket with the zip done up. Oh.

It was an embarrassing moment. Comical – we all laughed, but ultimately not my brightest moment

It’s crazy how our mind works during those moments. It automatically jumps to the worst conclusion instead of rationally thinking. We’re so constantly fixed with having set pockets, and 99% being right, whenever that 1% strikes, it does shock the system. Our keys are rather important – we wouldn’t get home. Our phones are rather important – it’s practically our lives, most information we carry around is on our phones. Our wallets and purses are rather important – that’s our bank accounts in there. Losing any one of the three can be incredibly impactful to our lives, that the belief we have lost them comes instantly as the thought of how it’s going to affect us clouds any perception of rational thinking.

It doesn’t have to be our phones or keys or money we have assigned pockets for – but even if we believe we’ve lost something we’d like to keep, it’s still disappointing.

If you haven’t felt relief before, you certainly will when you find your belongings in another pocket. An entire struggle lifts off your shoulders – you can carry on with your life as normal, happy with the fact you haven’t lost anything.

Until it happens again…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)