A couple of years ago, during a trip to the UK, I finally decided I needed a bag to carry on my travels. I was trying to juggle a wallet, camera, binoculars, passport, postcards, pen, notepad and who knows how much else. A shop conveniently presented itself and I found a nice black shoulder bag made out of some heavy-duty, man-made material with lots of convenient pockets, nooks and crannies.
Fairly immediately, I started getting good-natured teasing from my friends for carrying “a purse”. Though the teasing didn’t particularly bother me, something about it resonated inside my head. It didn’t feel like a purse to me. I toyed with calling it “the man bag”, or the vaguely more salacious “man sack”.
The contents of the bag gradually became more techie. A combination laser-pointer voice recorder was added, along with a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers. A tiny pocket knife was acquired, and a LED flashlight, and a thin 6-foot tape measure.
The correct analogy for for what I was building finally occurred to me. It wasn’t a purse at all; it was Batman’s utility belt! All I needed was a grappling hook and tear gas pellets and the equipment list would be complete.
Hmm, I wonder if Batman carried hemp lip balm in his utility belt?
3 thoughts on “The Man Sack”