On Pockets

Have you ever wondered who invented pockets?   Sure, I do have too much time on my hands, and nowhere to put them because I am in my pajamas and shock!  They don’t have pockets.

I try to imagine getting by in a world without pockets.  All I can think of is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  No pockets necessary or possible.  Maybe pockets came with the fall from grace.  God knew mankind would be spending a lot of time on the run and might need a place to carry a few nuts and berries.

Sitting at my desk waiting for a storm to pass and feeling disappointed that the inventor of the pocket is not better known and celebrated by history, I decide to fill the time by doing a little research on pockets thinking that I might make up for this slight. I search the internet for the history of pockets and find that the invention of the pocket was not the Eureka moment I had hoped it would be.  In my mind I pictured it like the discovery of fire or penicillin. In actual fact, it was a practical development that probably occurred to a lot of people at the same time maybe as much as 5,000 years ago.  Seems pockets started out as external, wearable pouches, belt bags or tie-on bags for carrying small tools.  (And I thought the fanny pack was a clever update!)  It wasn’t until much later that the pockets became a sewn-in feature of clothing and a place to carry the pocket watch for the man who literally had time on his hands.  (Sewn-in pockets came much later to women’s wear and became a symbol of emancipation.)

As always, there are downsides to the story.  About 1450 the word pocket entered the English language and gave a name to a growing criminal element, the pickpocket.  Pickpocketing was much easier before picking pockets became an inside job, while it was still a slash and grab event.  And, as mankind is want to do, the inner aspiring capitalist took a good idea and stretched it too far turning the simple pocket into wallets, knapsacks, backpacks, fanny packs, brief cases, suitcases, and trunks, and burdening women with purses and designer brands.
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But maybe I am onto something with my capitalist musings…The more I think about the history of pockets, was Henry Ford really trying to help us get from place to place?  Or was he just upping the pocket game with the automobile?  Aren’t most cars just giant pockets on wheels?  I know I keep a lot of small stuff in my car: loose change, a pen, a few clean masks, some plastic utensils, paper napkins, handwritten instructions to friends’ homes, a worn out old map of the city, a compass, a small plastic bowl with a lid in case of motion sickness, sunglasses, caps for my tire stems…I know some people who keep their cars so stocked up that there is only enough room for the driver.  Maybe Henry Ford was really a man who always dreamed of living inside of a pocket.  Or making a fortune pocketing people.

Well, this is taking up too much of my day.  I am heading out for a walk to clear the pocket of nonsense that is my mind.  I have other pockets:  one for my phone, another for my keys, and one for some tissues and some chewing gum.  Yes, I am an emancipated woman.  I have pockets.  And I know how to use them.