Nomadic Batbelts

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Have I mentioned yet that I lost my wallet this last weekend?

I hope I'm not obsessive about it, but it was a surprisingly traumatic experience. The agony of waiting and hoping and checking voicemail every five minutes, waiting for that good Samaritan to finally call me and let me know they had my wallet for me to pick up, it was pretty excruciating.

In a lot of ways, it was like the night before Christmas or your birthday when you were a kid. The torture of the waiting was, in many ways, more memorable than the happiness of opening the gifts.

It came to me that waiting for that call was the most dependent on strangers I had been in a long time. I was totally helpless until someone saw fit to call me.

What else might you lose that would leave you in that same exposed place?

House burning down? I don't think so, unless you're living far away from friends and family, and don't know anyone. But in a very short time of moving to a new place, we typically make connections, and soon have friends or at least acquaintances that we could call to stay with. In the worst case, you could just sleep over at work. Losing your house would be on of the more epic pains in the neck, but in the end, it's just a change of venue.

Losing your car? As opposed to the house, I think losing your car makes the list. Very few of us know people with an extra car they could lend us. Seattle's rainy, and things are far away, so walking or biking are generally not options. Busses are, at minimum, a huge pain in the neck. Once you establish a dependency on your car, losing it is definitely a life-disrupting event that leaves you very vulnerable.

Losing your job? Definitely. Maybe, like A~, you're well prepared and are looking forward to the high life on unemployment for a while. But eventually you have to go look for a job, and the whole process of interviewing and begging for a job and waiting for that offer call is one long stretch of near-complete helplessness that is worse even than losing your wallet.

Losing your relationship? Too subjective to say generally. Probably yes for most of us.

Losing your computer? For those of us with a dependence on our PCs, losing them leaves us far more vulnerable than it ought to. I was insanely frustrated all weekend because I couldn't upload anything from the laptop I use for work because I had left the nic/modem at work and had lost the building access keycard with the wallet. In fact, next to no access to money, the worst effect of losing the wallet was losing the ability to connect the computer. Tragic and wrong, but true.

I suspect we all have special vices equivalent to the loss of my computer. TV/Cable? Microwave popcorn? Cell phone?

Losing body parts? Definitely. Insanely so. Being on crutches earlier this year flagged how difficult life is when even a tiny amount of your mobility is removed.

Losing your clothes? If your house burned down, shelter may not be a real problem, but having only the clothes on your back certainly would be. Let's say the fire happens at night. You have nothing to wear tomorrow, you have to go clothes shopping (which I hate to do) for everything. Shoes, socks, belt, pants, shirt, everything. It would be very tough to start completely from scratch.

Losing electricity? Think about an extended blackout. It's the definition of helplessness, right? You're completely dependent on the power company to restore the juice. A day or less without power is just amusing, but life without electricity (and therefore heat, clean clothes, hot water, cooked food, refrigerated food, and on and on) would be very inconvenient shortly after that.

The other half of the equation is looking for opportunities for simplicity in your helplessness. I lost my wallet, fine. When I'm going to replace it, do I really need a wallet with three pockets, two money compartments, and space for a dozen or so credit cards? I lost my voter's registration card, ACBL card, library cards, insurance cards, Costco card, foreign money, and on and on and on. How much of that do I really need to carry?

I was starting to get into it before I my wallet was found. The minimum wallet configuration for me, I figured, is a driver's license, credit card, debit card, Costco card, building keycard, bus pass, and possibly health insurance information. Which is less than half the count of the original wallet.

What else could you cut out of your life once you suffered through the initial inconvenience?

Posit: your house burned down. They're rebuilding it and you move back in a year later. You've got over not having your two TVs and four stereo systems, including bathroom speakers. Do you really need to replace all that in your house? Do I need hundreds of books? Aren't they available elsewhere? Do I need three computers? Hundreds of CDs? I live alone, why do I have three beds?

And once you worked out life without your car - knew all your bus routes, trained your friends to carpool, had built up your bicycling muscles - would you really need another car? What makes my life so special that I need a car when ninety percent of the population of the world gets by just fine without one?

(On the other hand, I'll concede that my life would be significantly enhanced if all my clothes were incinerated and I got some good solid help in buying new ones from scratch.)

As I write this paragraph, I am riding the bus home after fencing. I am listening to I Will Survive on my MP3 player. I am typing on a laptop. I just checked my voicemail on the cell phone. I'm not even going to call them back, I just wanted to know if anyone called me. In the bag that the laptop is resting on is my Palm Pilot. I'm carrying extra AA batteries in case the MP3 player dies to avoid the possibility of life without music.

Also in my satchel is a small notebook and a pen. Besides speed of input and being able to actually read the output, I cannot think of a single good reason why I need to be carrying around all this technology. I could ditch a fistful of pounds of solid-state equipment and just write and hum to myself.

Does it need to be this complicated, or am I this way just because I can be?

Is it a nomadic instinct that remains with us at some genetic level? Do we carry around an instinctive imperative that we should be ready to pick up and go at a moment's notice? "Well, as long as I've got my entire life in my back pocket, I can handle life, anything can happen, I can go anywhere. I am as a metaphorical turtle, carrying all that is vital with me."

If nomading were the trend, we would all be wearing little batman utility belts of stuff vital to us. A camera in one pocket, notebook in another, a tube full of our vital papers, and another tube with coffee grounds.

And let me tell you, batman utility belts are not the style. Every time I try to wear mine, I practically get laughed off the streets.

So if we aren't genetically driven to carry our entire life with us, why do we make such an effort to put so much of it into our wallets and purses?

This isn't meant to be the Fight Club manifesto. I'm just saying that it feels terrible to be helpless and totally at the mercy of forces outside your control. When you break up, lose your credit cards, have your car break down on you, it just seems to naturally spawn thoughts of whether this is a battle that you really want to engage in; if it is something worth the vulnerability.