I can remember my first wallet. I was around 14 years old and had found a summer job making minimum wage. My proud parents gave me a new wallet with a penny in it “for good luck.” I'm not sure where that tradition started but it seemed natural to my New England roots.
The smell of the leather and its new stiffness made it a thing of beauty. Like most men, I kept it in my back pocket and over the years as I grew, the value it carried and the importance of it grew, too. Well into adulthood, as I added a driver's license, credit cards and other paraphernalia, the wallet played an even greater prominence, not only in my life and but on my rear end, as well. It soon took on the characteristics of George Costanza's exploding wallet from the “Seinfeld” TV series.
Not terribly long ago, after watching a news segment about pickpockets, I made the momentous shift of moving my wallet to a front pocket and, out of necessity, changed to the smaller profile of a trifold style. I even tried wrapping a rubber band around the wallet to make it impossible for someone to ease it out of my pocket, a trick I learned from my father-in-law. My wife went so far as to give me a present of a wide rubber band with an engraved sterling silver collar on it.
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