Have You Seen My Coat?

I lose things. Some people think I’ve lost my mind. That’s okay. I seem to better off without it.

I once lost a tarot deck for two years. I finally found it in a backgammon set I owned. I must have put the deck there during a move so it wouldn’t get lost. I’ve since lost the backgammon set. I haven’t seen it for years.

Some of my habits of living I’ve developed in self-defence against this propensity to lose things.

“Honey, have you seen my toothbrush?”

“I told you to stop wandering around when you brush your teeth. Look by the coffee carafe.”

You get the point.

Most recently, I lost my windbreaker. With the coming of fall, it’s a bit chill here in the mornings. Not cold enough for a coat, but a sweater or a light jacket feels good. Since I can’t find my windbreaker I took to wearing one of my wife’s old jackets. It’s just warm enough. It’s fairly fetching - green with a mottled brown pattern on the body. Well, maybe it would work better as camouflage. (Note to self: Leave green jacket at home during hunting season). It has a hood, not that I ever use it. I have an aversion to putting things on my head. That may be a remnant of rebellion against having to wear a hat when I was in the service. All in all, the jacket fills my needs nicely until I find my own. I don’t want to go out and buy a new one. The old one will turn up one of these years. And my wife has others, so she isn’t being deprived.

But. It’s a woman’s jacket. That doesn’t bother me. I’m not that attached to clothes. Keep me from being too cool or too hot, and I’m usually good. Except black socks with shorts. We do have to have some limits.

Basically, I just try not to look stupid. Stupid, though, is a relative term. I have been sent back to the house to change. Often by my parents when I was young. Sometimes by my wife, though she usually catches me before I get out of the house. A few times by my daughter.

Daaadd!

Some people put this non-attachment down to typical male lack of vanity. Those people have never seen men primp getting ready to go out. Nor had the pleasure of asking their friend what they did that afternoon and being told they had their hair styled. Ladies, the run of the mill male is as vain as you are.

It isn’t that I’m not vain. I’m just vain in different ways. No. I just don’t care about clothes.

Fortunately, my wife tries to dress me appropriately. She’s helped me build a wardrobe that can generally be mixed and matched any which way without being looked at too strangely by others, so I can look relatively normal when I go out.

She does like to be seen in public with me occasionally.

Until now.

Evidently it can be embarrassing to walk down the sidewalk with your husband as he wears your coat. How do I know this? My biggest hint came when she turned to me and said Rick, this is embarrassing.

So this morning when I got up to get ready for work there was another jacket laying out. Plain red with a black liner. Kind of a unisex type of thing. It’s a little warmer than her other jacket, but that’s okay. It was cooler today.

One of these days my jacket will show up. It’s red, white, and blue, a memory of the Olympics in a year gone by. My kids gave it to me. I can wear it in the woods during hunting season.

Popularity: 9% [?]

This entry is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.