Contents & Man Bag

My wife got me a nice, manly messenger bag because as a stay at home dad I really started to need one. A lot of men would look at the Man Bag as embarrassing or something that will need a lot of getting used to, I view it as an opportunity to be PREPARED. Men love to be prepared, we fill our car trunks with jumper cables and flares, we make sure every floor in the house has a smoke alarm and we fill our tool boxes with something for every job. So why not an everyday bag filled with "just in case" stuff?

I dumped my bag on some white construction paper, it is by no means complete yet (I need a little map) but here goes.

A. The Bag, kind of rough canvas and leather, lots of tiny pockets and pen holders.

B. Spare car key. No brainer.

C. Emergency rations, and emergency fresh maker.

D. Combination pen and measuring tape. You want both of these things and can easily fit both but my son gave me this for Christmas. Measure twice write once.

E. Notebook, where you write your measurements and notes.

F. Flashlight, Sometimes it's dark. Flashlights are great when you want to give your sons

something to fight over, like throwing a steak into a den of lions.

G. Pocket knife. Who knows when a knife fight is going to break out? Or when you'll need to

cut the twine you used to tie your Ikea purchase to the car roof.

H. Quarters. Sometimes it's gumballs or parking or one of those crane games- it's the currency

of the stay at home dad.

I. The movies you need to return. They're slippery and make it difficult to hold two sets of

hands in the parking lot.

J. Multi tool. Scissors because you WILL need to separate a toy from it's packaging on the fly.

Screwdriver, you will also need to open said toy's battery compartment. All the rest is just

gravy, or extra tools.

K. Nail clippers. Little boys (and girls?) have ever growing and dirty fingernails, don't want

Grandmom seeing those.

L. Lighter. Sooner or later something's going to need to burn.

M. Lens cleaner wipes. Little boys have sticky, dirty little fingers that they love to rub over

any and all glass surfaces.

Addendum- My checkbook and some band-aids were zipped into a pocket I forgot about.