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Dial ‘M’ for Moron

Yesterday I told you about my pocket problems. There’s one that I forgot to mention, but that you may be interested in.

(In a sort of ‘Ooh, look at the monkey dance!‘ kind of way. The sacrifices I make for you people…)

Anyway, this one involves my cell phone. I always keep it in my front left pants pocket.

(Except when I’m using it, of course. For one, using the phone while it’s still in my jeans would be awfully challenging, given that I’m not friggin’ Gumby. I mean, I’m ‘bendy’ and all, but I’m not that bendy. I can gaze at my navel, but I can’t actually get my eyeball inside it. I can kiss ass, but not my own. I know about self-love, but… all right, let’s just stop right there. You get the picture.

Besides, I think I’d get some pretty funny looks if I walked around talking to my crotch. Or rather, yelling at, given that whole not-bendy-enough-to-reach thing. And the conversations would be pretty one-way — I doubt I could hear much of anything from two feet or more away from the speaker.

On the other hand, I could cement my place as the weirdest person I know.

(Yes, it’s frightening that there’s even anyone else in the race, isn’t it? Poopyhead.)

But just imagine me walking around having loud, difficult conversations, and apparently with my penis. Bent over all day, straining toward my nethers, yelling,

‘Hello?! Hello?! What?’

‘Tuna! Tuna! Tuuuu-naaaaa!! Oh, forget it.‘

Nah, I’d better not try it. I get enough funny looks as it is, without really trying very hard.)

Okay, where the hell was I going with this?

Oh, my phone. Right. So, my phone’s usually in my left front pocket. Fine.

Now, I should explain that my pockets are generally pretty roomy. This is a Good Thing™, given the myriad of crap that I stuff in them every day. But some days — today, for example — the distribution of crap in the pockets gets skewed a bit. More bits of stuff end up in some of the pockets than others. And generally when this happens, it’s my phone that ends up alone, with room to shimmy around whereever it pleases. And this is where the problem comes in.

You see, my phone isn’t particularly small. It’s not ginormous, either, but it’s fairly substantial. About as wide and as thick as a pack of cigarettes, maybe, but a little longer. Like a couple of dozen credit cards stacked together, plus an antenna. Or two big dog turds laid end to end.

(Yes, I know that’s gross, but you’ve got to blog what you know, right? And I’m not so sure about the cigarette thing or the credit cards. It’s been a long time since I’ve had much experience with either. Dog shit, on the other hand, I see every day. I deal with a veritable fricking flood of dog doo on a regular basis. It’s downright diluvial. Really.

Yes, you can kill me now.)

So, anyway, the phone tends to shift and slide in there sometimes. And on occasion, it’ll twist itself just the right way, and fall, fully horizontal, across the bottom of the pocket. Now, for those of you who aren’t men, and can’t picture exactly what the male genitalia might look like, I’ll tell you that this poky-phone situation is not comfortable. At all. At best, it’s unnerving. At worst, it’s downright painful.

(And if the antenna is intimately involved, it feels a lot like a billiard cue stick, if you know what I mean. And if you move the wrong way, your ‘two ball’ might just end up in the ‘corner pocket’. Yikes.)

So, when this happens, I do what any reasonable person might expect one to do — I reach down, and gently lift the end of the phone closer to my happy place — first up, and then away from ‘ground zero’. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I flip it to the outside until the phone is standing upright, on the far side of the pocket. In other words, right where I want it. No problem, right?

Well, maybe. But perhaps I should also mention that I tend to perform this maneuver without actually reaching into my pocket. Which means that my sly little move looks something like this to any close observer:

I reach down, toward my crotch, and find a bulge. I get two or three fingers underneath it, and slide it up a few inches. Then I flick my wrist, and the bulge near my crotch suddenly disappears. Or gets a lot smaller, anyway.

(Hey, keep quiet. I don’t need your help in describing my bulge. And no, I’m not going to italicize ‘a lot smaller’. Get the hell outta here.)

Now, I’m not sure exactly what people might guess is going on… but it’s fairly safe to say that it isn’t good. It doesn’t help that many of the activities that often involve shifting pants — digging for keys, coming out of the bathroom, mooning the boss — are the same ones that cause the phone to jostle around. So people are already focused on my jeans when I make my little ‘adjustment’. So they can’t miss it.

(And they don’t. I can tell by the gapes on their faces.)

I don’t really have a good solution. I’m not so interested in a phone holster, or stuffing more junk in my pockets to hold the phone still. Something else would just poke me eventually — a pen, or my ID card, or something — and I’d be back to square one, publicly crotch-swiping all over again. I suppose I could try making the adjustment from inside the pocket, but I’m not sure that’s better. At least if people can see my hand, they know I’m not staying down there for the ‘long haul’. But maybe they just assume my ‘haul’ isn’t that ‘long’ to begin with. Or that I’m easily… um, ‘amused’. Or something. Ugh.

Anyway, I thought you should know. Not for me, you understand. I don’t get any pleasure out of embarrassing myself in front of you folks.

(Well, maybe just a little pleasure. I mean, I like it if you like it. Is it good for you? I know how you like to watch. Perv.)

But maybe this will alert you to the types of things — purely innocent, ‘routine maintenance’ types of things — that sometimes go on ‘down there‘. And maybe you’ll be just a little kinder, and less aghast, next time you see a guy fiddling around near his equipment.

(That’s an important distinction — he’s likely not fiddling with his equipment; it’s near his equipment. Get it right.)

Hell, maybe you’ll even be a good sport and help him out.

(Of course, then it’ll be ‘with‘ the equipment. Which really isn’t the guy’s fault. Look, if he’s at all interested in having your help in the first place down there, then the equipment’s gonna end up being pretty much everywhere. Suddenly, you won’t be able to swing a dead cat without hitting something naughty.

Not that you would, of course. Swing a dead cat. We don’t do that sort of thing in polite company. Even when ‘polite company’ involves helping out with a bad case of crotch crowding.)

So, have a heart out there. The next time you see someone groping his pockets, or fumbling in his drawers, or making with the hitchy-pants — don’t look down your nose at him. He’s having a rough day. Show him a little support. He’s is not an animal. He puts on his pants one leg at a time, just like you do. He just wiggles them around a little more, is all. So please, be kind.

Just… don’t ask to borrow his phone when he’s done. Really, you don’t know where that thing has been.