Elusive editor protects his pockets

By Nick May

I once said, “No, never” to Cyrus (Moussavi, when he along with fellow opinion-page conspirators badgered me from the journalism room to the band hallway about writing an article on pocket protectors.

So here I am, saying goodbye to a long year with a final article on pocket protectors.

What, one might ask, is a pocket protector in the first place?

Before I can answer that question, I must digress onto the subject of semiformal clothing. As a general rule, I wear button down shirts to school. It is a shocking day that I wear it untucked. A pocket protector is a simple pouch that fits in one’s shirt pocket and holds pens and pencils. Or, as I like to say, writing instruments or utensils.

My personal saga began last year when I began wearing nice wool Pendleton shirts from my grandfather. At the time I kept my pencils and the like in my pants pocket.

However, because I usually wore the shirts with the khakis I needed a place to keep my pencils and pens so that I wouldn’t ruin the pants by either getting ink on them or, the more real threat, was poking holes in my pants with my mechanical pencils. So I needed a pocket protector. I had heard of them, of course. I mean, who hasn’t?

I Googled for information, using such deep terms as “pocket protector” or, in what turned out to be a blind alley, “pants pocket protector.” I found a pot where someone was blasting someone as being stupid for thinking that there was such a thing.

The point of pocket protector is to not get ink on one’s shirt.

I have found that having a pocket protector has all sorts of positive side effects. Fro example, because one must have a shirt pocket to have a pocket protector, I was never without a place to keep random papers that I accumulated over the course of the day.

Aside from that benefit, pocket protectors are a great conversation starter. For example, I’m sitting here with 45 minutes until deadline with the opinion page having a gaping hole in it and I’ve got all sorts of people gawking at my pocket protector. On e person didn’t even know I had one.

As was just proved, I am fiercely protective of my pocket protector and anything other than a pencil from it. That’s only because it sticks out and isn’t clipped in. Although deep for philosophical pearls of pocket protector wisdom are yet to be forthcoming, I will disclose a little known fact: my model of choice is called “The Stealth,” although I sometimes salivate over another one called the “Badge Holder.”

Sorry folks, but now that the unfathomable has happened (I wrote an article that’s published and my shirt is untucked) and we’re going hog wild, I shall trot off to the trough and call this done enough for now.