I used to have a man purse.
Somebody bought one for me a few years ago and I found myself strapping it on around town while I was in school. Once the cell phone and wallet got tossed in there everything else was fair game. I’d stuff a burrito in before the movie, skip plastic bags at the corner store, and avoid taking a backpack to class. “So practical,” I’d find myself saying to friends. “I feel like a new man.”
And when I was toting the man purse around I always had a specific pocket to stash my keys. It was on the front for easy access and I preferred having them there instead of stab-jabbing my thighs through a day of classes.
But sadly, my friends, those days are gone.
See, I left my man purse in the back of a cab one night by accident and it sped off into the distance, leaving me in a cloud of dust, never to be heard from again. It was like that tragic scene in An American Tail where Feivel gets separated from his family. Only I was Fievel. 
And my family was the man purse.
These days I’m back to my thigh-jabby self again with assorted wallets, keys, and phones poking out of pockets all over the place. Random folded pieces of paper, bus transfers, and jing-jangling coins come along for the ride too, strapped right onto me, everywhere I go.
It’s always a tense scene when I get to the front door and suddenly go on a frantic Pocket Search to find my keys. Winter coats, sweatshirt pouches, and cargo pants complicate matters and there are times I’m stuck searching for up to two seconds.
ANNOYING!
People, that’s what makes it great when I manage to correctly guess which pocket is holding my keys at the front door. Call off the search party and scrap the mission because now we ain’t going fishin’ — we’re just getting in, getting comfy, and getting
AWESOME!
