A shameless product plug.

So here's the thing. I don't carry a wallet. As Kramer says, "My osteopath says it's bad for my spine." For me, it's just another wasted appendage sticking out of my backside.

For years, I've been carrying my ATM card (notably misnamed the MAC card - the "C" stands for "card") and other such necessary cards in my pockets and/or lunch bag compartments for the past 20 years or so. Fortunately for me, I'm the type that always knows where things are and, as Felix Unger says, "I know every item on my person." Can you tell I'm a little heavily influenced by television?

I've been happily going along with this method for the past ... 20 years ... until I opened the latest edition of Rolling Stone magazine and found something called the acmwallet. It's a little gizmo that holds your credit/debit cards and has a little money clip for those of us who have a little money. It's made of plastic so it isn't very heavy, but if you're used to carrying a wallet it isn't going to fit in your back pocket. If however, you're like me (God forbid) and you don't or haven't liked carrying a wallet around, you might like this thing. The cards pop out via a slider that you can customize with little icons that clip into the slots on the wallet-thingy.

Confused? Me too. Sometimes we have to be what the marketing people call "early adopters" and find comfort in change. As you can see from the photo (featuring my actual hand and thumb) the acm has 6 slots - one each for my driver's license, ATM card, Visa card, American Express (don't leave home...), MasterCard and gasoline card. Anything else, I can either leave home or live without. Those are my lifeline items. On the back is a money clip with, as you can see, the dollar that I have left to my name.

Anyway, go check out their web site and see if any of the products fit your needs. My guess is that women will find this more useful than men. Women carry their junk in their purse, so something like this might be more useful to them than most men who carry their junk in their pockets. That's why I don't.

There is also a 12-card wallet for those of you who have less to leave behind. And, as the Rolling Stones said, they come in colors. I chose blue.

Meanwhile, it's another shameless plug of a product here on the Internet. But I think it's awesome.