hosting by

When I Almost Lost My Finger
The adventures of pocket-diving
by Ike Degler

At NO time is the left front pocket of your raincoat a good place to put a banana peel. I have told myself that many times -- whenever I have found something dead and decayed in the vessels of my vestments.

One early fall day, when I was about 11, I found my rain coat in the hall closet and pulled it on with the enthusiasm of someone greeting an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time. As I headed outside and jammed my hands comfortably into the roomy Velcro-flap compartments, I hit what I first thought was a tree twig, but then froze as it seemed to nibble at my fingertips like a dusty set of false teeth, forgotten by someone long since past. This wasn’t my grandfather’s old coat, was it?

After yanking my hand out again to verify that all my digits were still intact, I felt the outside of the pocket gingerly, then opened it wide to shed some light on the artifact that had baffled my imagination. I finally recognized it as something resembling the oldest banana peel ever found on the North American continent.

My first thought was, if this was a banana peel, then some kind of numbskull must have put it there. Secondly, how unfortunate for ME that this moron, being the last one to wear the coat the previous spring, had left such a nasty gift in the pocket. Third, and most grave, I realized that this was my jacket. I had met the moron and he was me.

Examining the exhumed twig/dentures/banana peel further, I became awed at the miracle of organic decomposition and decay. What had begun as a soft, ripe yellow banana peel was now just a shrunken, blackened filament. What few sweet traces of fruit had remained when the peel was abandoned had long since evaporated or been devoured by ants whose great-great grandchildren were also now just a memory. Nothing else remained in the dark Gore-Tex tomb except for some blue and white lint (denim jean lint, probably -- always good to save) and a few sandlike bread crumbs. I must have carried food around in my pockets a lot at that age.

Since then, every time I have found weird things in the pockets of my clothes, I have thought of the fossilized banana peel and wondered if that scary encounter has taught me anything at all. I still find all kinds of garbage in my pockets. Most of the time, it’s useless and non-biodegradable stuff, like bottlecaps, BIC pen caps, and ancient store receipts for one- and two-dollar things like coffee or photocopies.

On the other hand, I have also since found quite biodegradable things, such as small bags of trail mix (which doesn't seem to EVER expire), slices of cheddar cheese — and once — a hard-boiled egg, still in the shell.

Cheese, as you may know, kind of just dries up and cracks. If it's in a breathable container like a fold-top sandwich bag or simply naked in the pocket, the moisture in it will evaporate before mold sets in, so you end up with a curved, dark orange plate that resembles a shard of plastic broken off of a Fisher-Price construction toy.

The egg was only about two weeks old and its shell was intact, but it struck horror into my mind just the same. In the split-second of frantic memory-tracing as to when I could have placed this egg in the pocket and forgotten it, all kinds of what-ifs and forehead-popping "dohs" raced through my head. I was just glad I found it when I did, and that I didn't accidentally smash it all over the inside of my clothing.

You may wonder why in the world someone like this wouldn’t just empty his or her pockets upon arriving home. This seems like a simple enough idea at first, but when you dive a little deeper, you find that it’s actually simple all the way through. I just don’t do that.

A particularly unpleasant item to abandon in la poche is an apple core, and the amount of unpleasantness in finding one varies conversely with the amount of apple you have consumed before stashing it. That is, the more of it you’ve eaten, the less there is to "discover" later.

But I’ve found that while finding an apple core in a withered, bone-dry state is just as distasteful as finding a banana peel, and possesses equal fright potential, it's the apple’s unique process of dehydration that really is unfortunate for the pocket amnesiac. Apples are so sweet and juicy compared to bananas, that they emit a lasting and punchy odor that can fully "enstench" a closet, car, or even bedroom in pretty short order. (Note to readers: Granny Smith and Newton varieties produce a sweet-sour aroma, while the starchier Red or Golden Delicious create a thin, musty fragrance that is milder and shorter-lived.) But hear me now and believe me later: In just a few days’ time, the simple combination of a quietly dying apple hidden in a jacket pocket and a pair of sweaty running shoes in your foyer can make one's apartment smell like an alley dumpster in August.

Thankfully, however, as I've grown up, I've been able to move more into non-perishable items like pennies, buttons, and price tags, and away from the eggs, apples, cheeses, and banana peels . Sometimes, when diving into dark pockets, my fingers will stumble upon the obvious favorite -- cash "foldin' money" in the form of a forgotten five or twenty. More often, though, when my fingertips hit softly weathered paper fiber, that flash of hope and financial windfall is dashed by the hard light of day — when I see in my hand just a folded thermal-paper grocery receipt from Safeway.

So what causes this obsessive-compulsive tendency to unwittingly store worthless, perishable, or unwanted items in pockets for future discovery? In some cases, it may be a "waste-not-want-not" upbringing, which discourages throwing away food that can't be eaten immediately. It may sometimes be because the edible part of the food has been consumed, but there isn't a convenient trash receptacle for the "wrapper," as in the case of the dehydrated banana peel. It may be from a sub-conscious, pack-rat character trait, one that compels the retention and storage of loose buttons, sweater lint, bits of cellophane, pens, saltine packets, rubber bands, and the little plastic clips off of bread bags, among other things. But very rarely does this activity deliver a feeling of real, personal satisfaction, like "Boy, I sure am glad I found this half-eaten rice cake from last month. I was just getting a little peckish."

Nevertheless, I forge ahead in my exploits, undeterred — always wondering what’s hiding and festering around the next corner, in last year’s outfits. It’s not the spoils of the hunt that urge me on, but the thrill of the chase. And I know there’s a noble force behind it somewhere. Perhaps fumbling blindly in the darkness of dusty pockets is my own way of rediscovering bits of the past that hold keys to the future. Perhaps these trifles and tidbits and Tic Tacs are all that’s left of my primal hunter-gatherer instincts — to store food and tools for future survival. ...Or it could be that it's an ominous trail of clues from myself about myself, like Guy Pierce had in the movie Memento. ...Who knows what evil lurks in the pockets of men...?

Or maybe I should just buy a garbage can.