Fifteen Minutes: Wallets? Lip Balm? Oh, the Humanity!

The pocket bulges on tight-jeaned strangers often run deeper than the stray T token or crumpled CVS receipt. Beneath those Diesels lies a hidden world of obscure interests and untapped dreams. In seven pocket excavations, FM hands stray to grab what lurks within the lint in the peacoat of the passerby.

1. Leonard Wu is prepared: for hay fever, for wood splinters, for kindergarden arts and crafts. His pockets are crammed with construction-paper scissors, oyster-opening pliers, eyebrow-plucking tweezers, extra-strength Kleenex packets and a bus schedule.

This young inspector gadget admits that the tool kit in his pants is reflective of a deeper emotional void. “I don’t throw things away often enough.” He is uncomfortable with change. FM found seven-month-old ticket stubs and multiple fliers for international folk dances.

2. Jonah M. Knobler ’03, of Knobler.com fame, is underage, but his pockets are ready for his 21st birthday bash. Just three years from now, his bottle opener will be popping “A cold Corona [sigh].. I just heard it’s good.”

3. There ain’t no valley lower than the Science Center mailroom, but Vincent B. Chu ’03 carries a Carabiner wherever he goes. It once secured him to a rope on the side of Malibu Mountain. Straying even deeper, FM found Vincent’s own little black book, scribbled thick with the names and numbers of all the barbies in Malibu.

4. Pick-pockets on the Harvard campus would come up dry, except in the pants of this anonymous female where everything smells of cocoa butter. To grab her cash, one must squeeze her way through the gooey layers of cocoa butter lotion and jumbo roll of cocoa butter lip gloss.

5. Fresh from Washington D.C. where she went last weekend to “stand tall with people who were fighting various forms of repression,” Rebecca Reider ’00 has the pocket of a true protest princess. A pin in her jeans rebelliously rings “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm: “[It’s] a slogan that’s been a dominant theme in my life.”

6. George F. Pierce has been patrolling since 1970, when Harvard student’s pockets were made of polyester and stuffed with disco passes. Along with his folded domestic abuse forms and translations of the Miranda rights, Pierce’s pockets are home to handcuff keys and a pair of gloves, just in case a person he handles “might not be too clean.”

7. Michael D. Park ’03 has a split-pocket personality. On his left side, he is your average Nokia-less Harvard freshman, with a phone card he often mistakes for his ID. His left pocket is cargo. He is G.I. Mike, with a silver mini army knife and a climbing Carabiner advertising 1-800-MARINES. “I have this whole military motif going on. [I would join the Marines] if there was a war or something.” He pauses. “But not for kicks.” That must be the left pocket talking.