Cell phones and shirt pockets

Either the size of the cell phone keeps getting larger, or the size of the pocket on my shirt keeps shrinking. I recently got a notification that I was eligible for a phone upgrade. Seems like it wasn’t all that long ago that I got my current phone. I’ve grown used to this phone. I know how to run it, it’s small enough to fit in the breast pocket on my shirt, and it still seems to be in good working condition. Like everything else however, I fear that my phone is about to the end of its life expectancy.

Trading phones is kind of like going to the dentist for me. I know the end result is beneficial for me, but I don’t like the process. I traded phones the last time when the last one fell out of my pocket while I was doctoring a foot rot cow. I have to say, the perfect imprint of a horseshoe was something that the phone store had never seen before. The poor salesgirl was at a loss with me when I was forced to upgrade, however. She was busy telling me all the fancy new things that the latest version of my phone could do, and I simply asked one simple question. “Does this version fit in the pocket of my shirt?” The poor girl was dumbfounded. I didn’t care that the camera could zoom in on a bird flying a mile in the air, or that it could store seemingly endless amounts of information, all I cared about was that it fit in the pocket of my shirt.

I think that phone size must run in cycles. When it was first invented, the cell phone was the same size as a football. When I was in high school, the cool thing was to have the smallest phone around so that no one knew you were messing with it while you were in class. Then came blackberry phones that offered a full keyboard and all kinds of apps that made your life easier. They were a handy size for a shirt pocket, but the slick back of them made them slip out of a pocket and into the water tank you were working on easily. Nowadays it seems like rather than the phones being small enough to fit in your pocket, you need to carry a briefcase or a purse big enough to hold the darn thing. I’ve had quite a few phones since my first flip phone several years ago. Most of the time I didn’t upgrade until I absolutely had to, or my phone had a catastrophic end.

I think there needs to be a meeting between the makers of cell phones, and the designers of pearl snap western shirts. Let’s find a happy medium where the pocket is big enough to hold an average sized phone and the flap on the pocket snaps, so you don’t lose it when you bend over or your pony decides to do an interpretive dance out on the prairie. I see there are some shirts out there that have a pocket that zips for your phone, they look mighty handy, but not for $100 a pop. Let’s design shirts for the working man who likes to carry his phone in his pocket and not on his hip. Make them comfortable but durable, and at a price that doesn’t make you cry when you rip a sleeve on the barbed wire or take a bath in hydraulic oil the first day you wear it.

I’m full of big ideas for the fashion and technology industries, sadly I don’t think they take the advice of cowboys. For now, I’ll keep struggling with the size difference between my phone and the pocket I like to carry it in. That’s all for this time, keep tabs on your side of the barbed wire and God bless.

Meinzer is a fourth-generation rancher raised on the southeastern plains of Colorado. He and his family live and ranch in Oshkosh, Neb.