Wallet-Sized

I remember my first kiss. Most people do, I would think. I was working at a day camp as an apprentice, or CIT or whatever. I was fifteen years old, and it happened with a twelve-year-old camper. I don't remember the details, though she probably initiated it-- I know I never would have. While most likely a gross violation of camp policy, I guess not technically illegal. Nevertheless, it’s moments like these where I’m glad I blog anonymously.

Of course everyone remembers their first car. I technically had two first cars—the 1966 Volkswagen Beetle that my father crazily bought for me when I was fourteen, (a year before my illicit first kiss!), that I never actually drove, and the 1990 Ford Crown Victoria, ex-Delaware State Police car that I did actually drive, for four months. Until the engine blew up.

We remember our first jobs, our first apartments, our first intercoursings. We’re a nation obsessed with firsts, and with being first. The first in our social spheres to buy a house, to have a baby, to host a successful social function that doesn’t end in Brooklyn-style fisticuffs and nobody gets salmonella poisoning. We love our first earned dollar bills so much that we tape them up on the walls of our shitty little businesses, for all to see. We remember the first time someone who wasn’t related to us by blood said the words “I love you” to us, and we fixate on whether they still mean it after the break-up even though we know they don’t, and probably didn’t.

Prickballs.

While we are definitely defined in this world by our firsts, I’d be willing to bet that not too many of us remember our first wallets.

I don’t.

I got my first debit card when I was seventeen, and it was done primarily to assist me in the purchasing of college text-books. I guess I slipped it into a wallet of sorts after receiving it at the bank, but I don’t remember. I’m assuming that, by seventeen, I had a wallet, but I couldn’t say for sure, and if I had one, it probably wasn’t my first one. Though I don’t remember, I’d be willing to bet that my first wallet had Velcro, because things made for people who aren’t yet adults tend to have Velcro on them. Unless we’re talking about diabetic sneakers, of course, those often have Velcro on them, too because, apparently, when you have diabetes, you lose the ability to tie your shoes.

That noise drives me crazy.

Anyway, I have no recollection of receiving and/or purchasing my first wallet. It seems to me, thinking upon it, that a wallet should kind of be a big fucking deal to a boy or even a burgeoning man, but it isn’t. At least, it wasn’t for me. And this is coming from someone who bought himself an antique, gold-filled pocket watch at age 13 with $300 of his Bar Mitzvah money.

I’m thinking about all of this because, on Saturday night, I replaced my wallet. Mrs. Apron and I were on a hot date at TJ Maxx (the only way it could have been any hotter would be if TJ added an extra “x”). She bought a pair of Naturalizer shoes (I picked them out—I knew she would love them because they sported a comically oversized faux button on the strap—just the right detail). She also bought for herself a $5.00 pink, frilly tu-tu (“I’ll only wear it with tights or leggings underneath!” she vowed in the store) and an Ed Hardy bikini, which is slightly psychedelic, but very cute. It fits her, it’s cute, and the swimsuit-purchasing-ordeal did not make her cry or resemble a Cathy cartoon in any way, so I was happy. I bought two Ralph Lauren dress-shirts (the total cost of which did not even equal the MSRP of one) and, well, my new wallet.

It’s kind of changing my life.

See—it’s a “front wallet.” I didn’t know such things existed until my wife and sister and I went to the Borgata in Atlantic City last weekend as part of our Hindenburg-style family vacation. We did just what we said we were going to do: blow $20.00 on the slot machines and go to the silly, overpriced stores to window-shop. In one such silly store, there was an array of Fossil products—bags for women, and wallets for men. That is where I first encountered the front wallet. It’s smaller and thinner than regular wallets, and it’s meant to go in your front pocket, as opposed to an egregious, uncomfortable addition to one of your ass-cheeks.

Madonna Mia, I thought, because Jewish people don’t say shit like that out loud, this is for me. However, I wasn’t going to pay $24.99 for it. I went home and searched Ebay for front wallets. $24.99, plus $5.45 shipping. Damnit.

At TJ Maxx, however, one called to me for $9.99. I yoinked it.

Now that I have one, I kind of don’t know how I did it for so long without one. It’s rather like having a cell-phone in that way. Who the hell were we before cell-phones? Obviously terrible people who were quiet in public places. Yesterday, I had to drive somewhere that was forty minutes away. Driving without a bulbous lump under one of my ass-cheeks was such a pleasure, I can’t even tell you. My mother had been on me for months about putting my regular wallet in my front pocket because keeping it in the back is bad for people with scoliosis and other annoying Jewish maladies. I tried that for about ten minutes one day, but it looked like I had a brickrection. Not going to happen. The front wallet, with its purposefully fewer pockets and such, is the answer.

It’s kind of changing who I am, though, and I’m not totally comfortable with that yet. See, I had all these pictures of my dogs, and my wife’s old passport pictures and little hand-scrawled love notes from Mrs. Apron and my library card and my EMT and CPR cards and my eyeglass cleaning cloth and my Staples rewards card and my AAA card and my voter registration card in my wallet and now, well, I kind of don’t have room for them anymore.

I suppose it’s like minimalist, Bauhaus living, in my front pocket. Doing more with less. Pairing down. The pocket-purge.

It’s scary. Big wallets are kind of in my blood.

My father’s wallet is approximately the size and weight of a corned beef sandwich from the Carnegie Deli. It doesn’t go into his rear pocket, or his front pocket, or any pocket because, well, it can’t. You’d need a hammock to effectively transport this wallet if you didn’t want to carry it around in your hand—which is exactly what he does. Oh, and it’s so crammed full of credit cards and discount cards and rewards cards and Starfux cards and slips of paper and Christ knows what else that it doesn’t actually close on its own—there’s a rubber band around it.

Sometimes, two.

Not only are all of the aforementioned goodies contained, or should I say "trussed up" in his wallet, there are pictures-- of my mother, of my sisters, of me. There are multiple pictures of each of us, in various stages of development. There is a picture of my father and my oldest sister that, on the back, is signed by actor David Keith. My father met him on a train once and that was the only thing my father had for him to sign. It's kind of funny to me. My father also keeps a note I wrote to him when I was fourteen or so. I left it for him on the dining room table the night before, so he would read it when he awoke for work, at 4:30am.

"Daddy-- would you please pre-tie my kangaroo tie for me? The length doesn't matter, it will be under a vest."

I love my father, even though he's a hairy gorilla man with a Volkswagen-sized wallet.

You’ll know him instantly if you see him—a handsome, young-looking Israeli man ("That can't be your dad!" a friend texted me after she saw him at a run downtown) with hair everywhere except for his head padding around the streets looking for the nearest Camera Shop or grocery store selling grapes for $0.63/lb. in a t-shirt, athletic shorts, dress shoes with no socks, gripping onto an impossibly-sized wallet, held together with some sort of vulcanized adhesive strap. Just don’t stare—he might take out one of his false teeth with his tongue, and you won’t sleep for weeks.