I’m embarrassed to admit that there are elements of things I own that I never knew existed. I groused some time back that my car did not have a place for change. How could it be that the car maker didn’t think of something so basic? Annoyed, I looked at all the unused places on the dash, where they could have put it and came across a seam with a space beneath it for a grip…and pulled out a change drawer.

There are functions on laptops, smartphones, e-readers, tablets…mobile devices…that I’ll never know…first, because I still want a connection to the real world and not descend into an all-consuming alternate digital reality and, second, because I don’t need to know how close I am, at any moment, to a Serbo-Cuban restaurant that serves peccary stew on Tuesdays and has an on-screen pronunciation guide to Serbo-Cuban and a MySpace video interview with the chef…and the waitstaff.

More to the point, I never knew until recently that my pajama pants have three pockets…right pantleg, left pantleg and right cheek. The two pantleg pockets I can understand. Standing around in your pajamas, you need a default place to put your hands, so you don’t get fidgety. And for me, it’s too country-western to stick thumbs into the elastic/drawstring waistband…hence those two pockets. But the back pocket? Manufacturers are always looking for ways to cut costs, so why sew in a wallet pocket?

But, maybe, I didn’t buy pajama bottoms at all, but flimsy, cotton plaid pants with a drawstring for casual Fridays at work…the new business chic. But with no left-cheek pocket and no fly, they’re incomplete. It’s those manufacturers…always cutting corners to save money.