Essay 3 Draft: Wallet in the Back Pocket

Wallet in the Back Pocket

            BAM! The force of my wallet against my butt just hit me as I sat down. I wonder why we even have such useless pockets in our jeans to put our wallets in. The problem is we can’t really do much about it. Every pair of jeans nowadays comes equipped with a back pocket, and everyone is using it for one reason and one reason only, as a placeholder for our wallets. But why in the world would we want to sit our wallets, which contain some of our most valued items like cash money, credit cards, and coupons? What if your wallet falls out your pockets? It was just because you were careless. And what if someone cleverly sneaks up from behind and reaches into your back pocket and grabs your wallet? You probably should’ve been more aware of your surroundings. You can blame everything else for the reasons why you have so many problems with your wallet but in reality, the problem is one of the most useless fashion inventions in the world: the back pocket.

            One of the biggest problems with putting the wallet in the back pocket is that IT HURTS! In fact, doctors are seeing more and more patients, primarily men, with back pain associated with the wallet in the back pocket. They’ve even coined this disorder as wallet-neuropathy (BBC News). If the wallet in your back pocket is so painful, then why do you continue putting it there? Clearly, whoever thought it was a clever idea to make back pockets in jeans didn’t think putting your wallet there would hurt.

            Aside from the literal pain in the ass putting your wallet in the back pocket can cause, it could also fall out easily or get stolen. I know I always tend to put my wallet in my jacket before I leave the fishbowl at 2:30 AM to go home, only because all those DPS crime alerts of robberies makes me worried that my wallet is too easily accessible. It’s way too easy to spot your wallet when it is sticking out of your butt.

So after all of this questioning and curiosity, I have come up with a new definition for the back pocket: A useless wallet holding capsule on our butt that is serving the purpose for allowing foxy individuals to sneakily (and creepily) come closer to your rear end so they can snatch your prized wallet away, an issue so common we have a special name for it and its called pick pocketing.

Unfortunately, this wallet in your back pocket problem that we’ve been talking is more than just a safety issue. As you sit down with your wallet in the back pocket, you will naturally sit so that it is still comfortable to place your right butt cheek on the seat, which will naturally cause your wallet to be pushed up and out of your wallet. You don’t really notice because you don’t expect anything to actually hurt your butt when you sit down. Next thing you know? You get up and leave your wallet lying there on the seat. You walk away and don’t notice that you have lost your wallet.

There must’ve been some sort of creative reason for why whoever thought to create back pocket in jeans for the purpose of putting your wallet there was a good idea, but I really can’t think of any. What I can think of though are solutions to this seemingly small but actually big problem. How about lets continue using the back pocket as a fashion statement (perhaps providing a reason for why we should be looking at other people’s butts) but not actually use it put our wallets. Instead, let’s put our wallets in our front pockets, our jacket pockets, or give them to your girlfriend or wife to hold on. Other options include using money clips, reducing your wallet size by getting rid of credit cards and unnecessary pictures, or just putting your wallet in your purse or backpack.

Interestingly, putting your wallet in your back pocket is only one of the many stupid reasons for using the back pocket. I’ve seen women use their back pocket to put their cell phones and money in (isn’t that what purses are for?). So instead of sitting on your wallet, which is bad enough in itself, you sit on an even more prized possession: the cell phone. Won’t the screen crack or won’t it bend in half? Women must think this is some sort of fashion statement because it is by far the most absurd thing to sit on your cell phone! It’s like asking for your cell phone to become damaged.

            At the end of the day though, this whole wallet and the back pocket thing is something society won’t really question and want to change. As long as the apparel companies continue to make a back pocket, we will continue to use it only for on reason and that is to store our wallets. 

Love

Love is complicated. It's hard to find love and it's even harder to love someone for so long. Kipnis takes on love and its potential delirious consequences. In my opinion, I agree with a lot of what Kipnis has to say. Once in love, you are kind of obligated to maintain psychological maturity, and mutuality. But I think she is looking at a very specific, narrow, and stereotyped love. A lot of relationships are very successful and the benefits outweigh the consequences. So in that case is love still overrated?

Kipnis also fails to look at love in the sense of loving your friends and family. Love is feeling not only in marriage but in life. Love for us is really important because we need to feel that sense of belonging, that someone out there cares of us, loves us. Therefore, love is essential for our happiness which is what everyone wants anyways. Yearning for love is just part of human nature. I don't think anyone could just be like "Oh screw love." Yeah it's complicated and could have some straining consequences but in the end of the day, we all need it and society demands it; so we just gotta follow the rules and fulfill our needs. 

English 325 Essay 2

The two authors I chose for my imitation pieces are Dave Barry and Alice Steinbach. These two authors have very different styles so I thought it was be nice to try them both out.

For the Dave Barry imitation, I'm am doing writing about potholes and how they cause so much damage to the tires of vehicles, in turn causing people to spend so much money on tire replacements. The imitation is based on his piece "Road Warrior," where he makes fun of people with road rage. Barry uses a lot of sarcasm to draw humor to serious topics. He also uses a lot of analogies, metaphors, and exaggerations to add to his humorous tone. With regards to punctuation, he likes to capitalize his sentences to add emphasis and to highlight his emotions.

My Alice Steinbach imitation of "The Mrs. Dennison School of Writing" is about my experience with Mr. Kim, my Tae Kwon Do instructor who got me to the black belt level. In her piece, Steinbach has a very nostalgic tone where she is very descriptive of her experiences with her writing teacher Mrs. Dennison. She uses a lot of dialogue and dashes for emphasis. She uses mainly the past tense and she also likes to use similes to serve the purpose of description.

While analyzing the voices, tones, and styles of these authors, I found it extremely helpful to read the pieces over and over again to really ingrain the style into my head before I began writing. I tried not to go back to the piece too much when I was actually writing because I did not want my pieces to sound like a copied version. I also found it helpful to write parts of the pieces by these authors to get a feel how they think when they write. Other than that, I tried to keep the main points of the authors' voice and style in mind when writing.