There was a time, not so very long ago, when the very idea of a manbag was derided as the type of thing you would only encounter either in a fairy tale or, possibly, Europe. Men did not carry bags. Instead, they attempted to cram everything they ever needed or were likely to need into their trouser pockets. Generally, such items consisted of your house keys, wallet and a handkerchief. There was simply no need for a manbag. Unless, of course, it was called an ‘Eski’. But things have changed. These days, the sheer volume of material the modern person must transport has increased exponentially since those simpler times.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when the very idea of a manbag was derided as the type of thing you would only encounter either in a fairy tale or, possibly, Europe. Men did not carry bags. Instead, they attempted to cram everything they ever needed or were likely to need into their trouser pockets. Generally, such items consisted of your house keys, wallet and a handkerchief. There was simply no need for a manbag. Unless, of course, it was called an ‘Eski’. But things have changed. These days, the sheer volume of material the modern person must transport has increased exponentially since those simpler times.
It starts with the wallet. Once this provided a straightforward means of carrying cash and your driver’s license around. No more. These days it is a compendium of plastic. Speaking for myself, my wallet has more cards than mothers’ day. There are credit cards, cards to access cash (cash, itself, is no longer welcome), membership cards and cards that appear to serve no useful purpose other than to make my wallet look as though it just swallowed something large. Then there are the various ‘loyalty cards’. The mere fact that I carry them in my wallet is proof enough of a loyalty that stops just short of following the card into battle. That our wallets are fatter than they’ve ever been, but mostly cashless is a complete subversion of their purpose. Instead, a wallet is now little more than a portable filing cabinet for cards that, one distant day, may or may not come in handy.
More than just carry a wallet, as a result of the miracle that is modern technology, we must carry a mobile phone at all times. Once upon a time, a telephone was something you visited. It was accepted that for large periods of time, you would be beyond contact, unless you happened to bump into someone you knew when down the street. This, clearly, was an unsatisfactory state of affairs and great scientific minds were deployed to fix this failure of contact. When the mobile phone first appeared, it was the only slightly smaller than a wombat and could only be considered ‘mobile’ if you had a Sherpa on hand to carry it for you. For those who were sadly Sherpa-less (which, let’s be honest, was most people) they were forced to lug the thing around in a backpack. But even then, it wasn’t enough. Much like the world itself, the mobile phone got smaller and smaller. The tinier it became, the greater the expectation that the thing would be within your reach at all times. Friends, family and loved ones, after not being able to contact you for almost ten minutes and worried out their minds, will sternly take you to task by asking, ‘where were you?’
Aside from bloated wallets and mobile phones, there is the matter of music. The iPod has changed everything and I won’t even contemplate leaving the house to go to the milk bar without having fifteen thousand songs at my immediate disposal. Granted, it’s unlikely that I’m going to need to listen to ‘You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd’ by Roger Miller within the next ten minutes, but the fact that I can provides me an enormous sense of assurance. You wouldn’t want to find yourself craving the dulcet tones of Mr. Miller and not be able to do something about it, would you? And although you can load songs onto your phone, they only hold a fraction of song an independent iPod can stand, so really you need to carry both at all times, just to be on the safe side.
Finally, there are the keys. Once there was the key to your house, the key to your car and, maybe, your office. Three keys was all anyone needed. But, like wallets, keys too have gotten fatter but no more useful over the years. It now takes me three keys to get in the front door. Ever since humanity started trundling face-first towards the abyss, even the mail needs to be locked away. The key to the car has grown up and refuses to be part of the regular key ring, preferring instead to stand-alone. This is more than a reasonable pocket can stand. With all that a person has to carry, humanity’s trousers are now in serious danger of plummeting earthwards.
I had promised to run a few errands but, due to a serious lack of physical condition on my part, elected to walk them instead. Standing in the fish shop, I was waiting to place my order when I noticed. In the crook of my arm was a strap that cascaded over my freckles to a recyclable shopping bag below. In that bag were my wallet, phone, iPod (I’d felt a Roger Miller moment coming on as I left the house) and keys. Within a few short years, the recyclable shopping back has become ubiquitous. Not since the milk crate has something created for one purpose had so many other uses. It was as plain as the bag on my arm that in using this object I was doing much more than paying a little environmental lip service. I was using it as a manbag. There was a sharp, instant flash of realization: I am not the person that I thought I was. There’s no point denying it – without even realizing it, I have become a manbag toting dilettante. If that means that people want to call me names, so be it. I’ll just turn up the volume on ‘You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.’