#coats

Practical things like my keys, wallet, chapstick, of course. But also less conventional things like stray buttons, paperback books, little toys, nail clippers, and open bags of candy when I offered strangers new acquaintances candy they always said yes which either says they weren’t raised right or I’m more charming than years of being told not to do that.

I really loved my coats but I did sometimes need to move quicker than they allowed. I remember a friend’s utter astonishment when I saw someone I needed to run up to and said hold my coat. He was left holding my carapace and when I returned he couldn’t stop staring. “You’re so small under there, I’ve thought you were a normal person this whole time but it was all coat!”

At the doctors office getting weighed a week or so later I asked if I needed to take off my coat and boots. She said no, and I stepped on the scale. “A hundred and twenty pounds,” she announced.

My eyebrows shot up and I said, “Sorry, hang on.” I shucked my coat and boots to her impatience and stepped back on.

Her eyes widened and she looked back from me to the coat before saying accusingly, “Ninety seven.”

Opera Coat

c. 1895

by Madame Judith, French