Pockets

On our last vacation to the great White Mountains, my son came up to me, beaming with pride, and told me that he'd found a penny on the ground (he LOVES finding money; I fear I may have a future accountant on my hands here...) :)

He then asked me to hold it for him, because his shorts didn't have any pockets. I looked, and sure enough they didn't. Doing laundry after vacation, I was folding his shorts and noticed that he had many pairs of pants and shorts that didn't have pockets.

No pockets. I couldn't conceive of wearing pants that didn't have pockets. Where else would I put all my stuff?

*Wallet
*Keys
*Gerber Paraframe
*P3AT
*Spare mag
*Cell phone

And that's on a light day...

I starting thinking about it... How innocent is that, that my son doesn't have to carry any of the gear that one picks up through life? He doesn't have to carry a wallet, because daddy pays for what he needs. If he gets hurt and needs to show insurance, that's covered too. He has no need for ID, nor credit cards, nor money. He doesn't have to carry keys, as he has no car to drive and is always with us when he's out of the house. No cell phone yet (and he will NOT be getting one in the foreseeable future, either - I absolutely DETEST seeing an 8 year old with a fucking cell phone glued to their ear).

And the defensive items. Never mind the idiotic "Zero Tolerance" bullshit the schools foist upon our kids where they can be expelled for carrying a tiny Swiss Army knife for a moment, my son doesn't have to worry about predators.

Because that's my job. And it's one I take very seriously. Why? Because I'm the dad. That's what we do.