Ehren's Secret To Filling Out A Pair Of Pants

I am, at heart, a giant packrat. I’m not sure why. When I was a kid, I used to comb garage sales and tag sales looking for cool stuff that I could bring back to my room to hide in some dusty corner to never be looked at again. If asked, I produce essays I wrote as far back as sixth grade.

My closet is a full-blown disaster area. Sure I have clothes in there…somewhere. But I also have:

• Every single Nintendo Videogame system ever produced.
• Shoeboxes filled with games for said systems. Hey, you never know when I might be filled with the over-powering urge to play Duck Hunt or Zelda 1.
• A blender and a rotisserie oven (Because what kind of a party is it without margaritas and a roast chicken?)
• My comic book collection. (This is kept under the vain hope that I had when I first bought them: If I keep them long enough, they’ll eventually be worth money. At this point, however, I’m beginning to think I’d have been better off collecting dirt.
• My baseball and basketball card collection. (Bought and kept under the same assumption as the comic books. Hey, they might not be worth much now, but when Grant Hill finally becomes the Hall Of Fame player he was projected to be out of college, I’ll be sitting pretty.)
• Three rubber chickens.

My closet is bad. I know this. However, the place where my pack-rat compulsion is damaging can be seen every time I have to reach for my wallet. In the course of my lifetime, I’ve carried a grand total of three wallets. The first one went off the side of a canoe when I was in 7th grade. The second was supposed to have been leather, but I carried it so long that I actually wore it down to cloth. The thing was, conservatively, the size of one of those bibles that soldiers carry onto the battlefield. Roughly the size of an autistic raccoon’s head.

I used to keep EVERYTHING in my wallet. And I do mean everything. I had ticket stubs to “Water World,” “Batman Returns,” and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" And when you’re carrying the county Yellow Pages around in your pants, it’s impossible to keep it in your back pocket. If I did, I’d be perpetually sitting at a 45 degree slope. So instead I was always sporting what looked to be a very square, off-center, flaccid cock swinging around one side of my pants. I don’t care what you say: some women DO think that’s hot.

The wallet I carry now is five years old and I still refer to it as the “new.” I made a conscious effort when I got it to clean out the shit I don’t need on a day to day basis (naturally, I saved it all in my room, just in case I ever need to prove that I sat through a terrible Kevin Cosner film in the late 80s). But that was five years ago and I’m beginning to think that it’d be easier to just haul a mattress around with me to hide my money under.

Let’s face it: men have a lot of shit to haul around: cell-phone, money, change, business cards, credit cards, keys, condoms, knives, flashlights, guitar picks, power tools…and yet we have no socially acceptable way to carry everything. Say what you want, but no woman respects a dude who carries a purse. I used to wonder what the fuck anyone could be carrying that would necessitate a fanny pack. Now I know. The only two things you can't carry around with a fanny pack are your balls and self respect. Seriously, if you’re over the age of 7 and you carry a fanny pack, immediately go out to the garage and hang yourself with it. We need to get you out of the gene-pool before you contaminate future generations.

So I began thinking: Who is the only dude I’ve ever seen that carried a bunch of shit around in a manner that was cool?

Batman.

So I believe I have what will be the next big thing in Men’s Fashion: Utility Belts.

Think about it: secret compartments for your phone, wallet, business cards, and even about 70 other things that you’d never find a use for. Like some of those smoke bombs that let you disappear. Laugh if you want, but I guarantee that your boss will take your raise request with a whole new degree of earnestness if you make your demand and then vanish in a cloud of smoke.

Until then, for the last time people: Yes, that is my wallet in my pants. And no, I’m not happy to see you.