WastedPotential
sociotard
Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
Posts: 3691 |
The Christmas Coat of Coincidence
In novemvber 1996, i was away at university and broke as, well, as a college student. When i went home for thanksgiving, i cruised the thrift stores for metal pie pans. At christmas, i bake a lot of pies and give them out to friends, family, co-workers. High quality, inexpensive pie pans. this was my goal.
One of the stores i shopped was the hospice thrift. Among the people i know, it is referred to as "the cancer store." I picked up some pie pans, sorted through the vinyl looking for soundtracks, and then i saw the coat. It struck me as being pretty ugly. I tried it on, perfect fit. A wool pendleton jacket for $14. But i just couldn't do it, $14 was beyond my budget. I went to the counter to pay for the pie pans. The elderly woman running the register asked me if that was all. I said yes. She said, "that's all, when all the clothes in the store are half off?"
"Even coats?"
My theme at the time was self-torture. self-torture of the sort that wearing ugly clothes really meshed well with. But the idea of wearing thrift store clothing didn't really appeal to me. I had never bought used clothing before. Maybe it was a way to degrade myself, maybe it was my subconscious, for whatever reason, i bought the damn coat. With the really nasty beard i had grown, and my old man coat, i really looked and felt the part of the old man. it was great.
So i went back home for christmas. I showed up at my grandpa's house to hang with the family. My dad was in the kitchen when i walked through the door. The first thing he said was, "Did you get that coat out of the bedroom just now?" I said no. I told him i had bought it. I asked him what he was talking about. He said that he used to have a coat just like it when he graduated from high school. He said that it was in storage, in the back bedroom. He said, "ah, that coat has all the buttons. mine was missing them."
I said, "I had to sew these on. They were all..."
"...in the front pocket," he finished for me.
Okay, i wanted to see this other coat really bad now. We went into the back room and couldn't find it. Dad asked grandpa where it was. Grandpa had decided to get married again the preceding summer. He had the house up for sale, and had taken several boxes of things to the thrift store. I asked him which thrift store. He said he took it to hospice. My grandmother had died of cancer, he felt that was the charity he wanted to help.
So the short version is that i paid seven bucks for a coat that was, more or less, my birthright.
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11-09-2001 02:33 AM
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