I keep my wallet in my left rear because I am right-handed. I was keeping it in my right rear but realized that I’d always fish it out with my right hand and transfer it to my left to get anything out; keeping in the left rear and fishing it out with my left eliminated that transfer.
Sometimes I’ll put my wallet in an interior coat pocket if I’m wearing a coat in a crowded area.
My grandfather, who gave me my first wallet, told me to keep it in a front pocket since that made it more difficult for pickpockets. I have no idea if this is true, but I’ve kept it in the right front pocket since I was a kid, and can’t imagine changing now.
I’m surprised there’s been only one mention of sciatica.
I switched from right rear to right front about 15 years ago. I had heard it advised due to sciatica. We went on a vacation and my wife recommended I keep my wallet in a front pocket to make it more difficult for pickpockets. I found it wasn’t a problem, so I stuck with it.
Was I misinformed, or is it wiser to use a front pocket?
Is there a biological reason why guys prefer a particular pocket to put their wallet in?
[My post might instill a little controversy into this thread. I refer to the general topic as the “left/right preference”.]
Ever since I was a kid, it bugged (and mystified) me that suit pants and dress slacks always had a button on the left rear pocket which is where I put my comb, while the right rear pocket, where I put my wallet, had no such protective button. Because I’m right-handed, it seemed natural to me to put my wallet in my right rear pocket.
I am a gay male, and after I started going to gay bars, I noticed that the majority of the guys there wore their wallets in their right rear pocket, whereas, in straight environments, most guys wore their wallets in their left rear pocket!
I thought I had discovered the answer to every gay man’s prayer: how to tell, in an instant, whether a guy is gay or straight. However, to quote my favorite line from the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes, “My theory was a perfectly good one. The facts were misleading.” There seemed to be some flaws in my theory. I noticed that some gay men wore their wallets in their left rear pocket. And some presumably straight men wore their wallets in their right rear pocket. What was one to make of that?
Well, following in the time-honored tradition of Western science, I modified my theory to fit my latest set of facts. Now, my current theory is that the left/right preference is actually a reflection of one’s inclination for being dominant or submissive sexually, regardless of whether one is gay or straight.
For those readers who are unaware, different colored handkerchiefs have traditionally been used in the gay community to signal one’s special sexual interests. For example, a dark blue hanky indicates a desire for anal sex, a black hanky indicates an interest in BDSM, and so forth.
Wearing that hanky in the left rear pocket indicates you are a top (dominant), while wearing it in the right rear pocket indicates you’re a bottom (submissive). Similarly, wearing keys on the left or right side indicates whether you are a top or bottom respectively. Any gay person unaware of this needs to sign up for Homosexuality 101 immediately!
One time, a guy I knew at the gay bars told me that, because he put a hanky in his right rear pocket to indicate he was a bottom, he had to switch his wallet to his left rear pocket which he couldn’t stand. Now I can’t stand wearing my wallet in my left rear pocket either. The wallet just doesn’t feel comfortable there. So I wonder if there just might be some biological basis for the left/right gay signals.
Now there are a couple “details” with my latest theory that need to be worked out:
(1) What happens when the person in question is left-handed? I’m not sure how the left/right preference works for left-handed individuals.
(2) For a while, due to a sciatic nerve problem, I wasn’t wearing my wallet in either rear pocket. I had moved it to my left front pocket (as I always carry my keys and change in my right front pocket). Either the left/right preference doesn’t apply to front pockets or it’s reversed, as I didn’t have a problem with wearing my wallet in my left front pocket.
Perhaps, some graduate student at a university could make the left/right preference the subject of his thesis!
Does anyone have any thoughts regarding my theory?
No thoughts on your theory, but I do have to wonder about your penchant for zombie pants threads…
I’m a straight white male, and I must have missed the memo on which pocket to put my wallet in. I do right front myself since I’m right handed and it has too much stuff in it to be comfortable in a back pocket, not to mention that I’m from New York and paranoid.
I use Kleenex, not hankies. I shudder to think what this says about my sexual proclivities.
On the other hand, a wallet in the left rear pocket would be difficult to get at unless you are left handed or a contortionist, so maybe that has something to do with it.