the jacket

For some reason certain things stick in your craw. They never leave. I call them poppers. They keep popping up when you least expect them. They usually mean nothing. They are not harbingers of doom or bad memories that depress you. They are just poppers. Pop, there it is again. Why? No one knows. Certain things we never remember. Certain things we never forget. "Poppers" are those unforgettable things. The jacket is one of my poppers. It happened 52 years ago in the fall of 1956. I was seventeen, full testosterone and stupidity and I had five good buddies that were exactly like me. We were shopping for school clothes in Provo, Utah. Provo was not our home town. We were from Orem but in those years Provo was the place to shop. Provo was one of those quaint small towns with one main street going east and west and another going north and south. Both streets were lined with trees and parking was at a diagonal in front of the stores. 1956 was the year of the "Car Coat" and we all wanted one. However, they were quite expensive. They ran about $40.00 and by the time we had our Levis, dress pants and some different styles of shirts we didn't have much money left. We all went onto the jacket store and wandered around looking at the different car coats. I was trying on a gray wool one with a lapel collar. It was mid length and hung just below my butt. I walked over to the mirrors to check out the look and then I just wandered around the store wearing the jacket. One of the group said come on lets get out of here and they started to leave. I looked around and both clerks were busy and not paying any attention to me so I just walked out with the jacket. Oh my God, one of my buddies said. You stole the "effen" jacket. That's really cool. I "was" the "man". They all laughed and giggled and said how great I was to steal the jacket. I was elated and excited. I did it. Wow, I had a "Car Coat". As we were driving home it dawned on me that I couldn't take the jacket home. My mother would know that I stole it. I told that to the others and one of them said he could fool his mother and he would pay me for it. I thought boy am I stupid. I took the chance and if I had been caught it would have been my butt at the police station. Now I wasn't even going to get the jacket. He took the jacket and came up with a story about winning it in a drawing. I was the thief. He had the jacket and you know what, he never paid me a dime for the damn thing. I have never stolen another thing. Maybe "poppers" are really my conscience talking to me.