Crackheads, leather jackets and tennis

So, as I was wandering through the dusty recesses of my mind this morning I came across a picture of one of those things in life that seem to have followed me from place to place.

In the last few years, I have gone the route of getting rid of possessions. I had reached the point where all my things were beginning to own me rather than me owning them, so I when I moved back to the area I let go.

It's a terrible thing when you find a toaster and microwave large enough to cook a turkey in is dictating how you should live your life and limiting your freedom of movement.

One thing I've never been able to get rid of is a leather jacket I got in the 8th grade. Believe me it hasn't been for lack of trying, and now, as I look at the ugly old thing, I feel sort of responsible for it. It's like a pet so ugly no one else would have it. Imagine a fat cat with bad breath and gas coming in to your life and you somehow develop a sort of horrified affection for it.

That's my bomber leather jacket.



It still has the little gold peace symbol I pinned on it after I was forced to give up soccer after 12 years of heavy playing when I moved to Fayette County and discovered that they believed the word soccer ball referred to a venereal disease.

I took up tennis as a protest to the situation, refusing to play football even though I was very athletic. Now tennis is like one of my geeky loves. I learned the sport in one summer, playing every day for 6 hours and made varsity that fall. I lost two matches in two years, both in the playoffs.

I still carry my rackets around in my bag 'o sports in the back of my car as if one day I'll be driving down the road and see a tennis match break out on the side of the road...

"Hey guys, need a fourth for doubles?" I always imagine myself saying. "Nope, got my stuff right here!" Hijinks* ensue. Oddly enough, this has never happened. But I'm prepared.

Back to the jacket. I can't get rid of this thing. Sometime in my first semester of college, It dawned on me that this jacket was ugly. I mean not very good looking. I've always been a personality kind of guy, so these things take time for me to realize (in this case, 4 years.)

Anyway me and the jacket began to drift apart. I did take it with me one time though when a group of us went on extended weekend to New York. Rutgers, NYU and Columbia were on the list of places to party.

We get to NYU and in a monumental fit of stupidity, everyone publicly put their bags of clothes and goods in the trunk of a single car after parking downtown. It had the best lock someone reasoned.**

Of course, none of us realized that in New York the word 'locked' refers only to handguns (as in locked and loaded) and has no practical application in the real world of protecting things from being stolen.

I mean this is a place where people are regularly stolen. Inside of ten minutes, crackheads had busted open the trunk and stolen just about everything. There was so much stuff the fuckers actually got picky towards the end, a terrible thing to think about a crackhead being picky about what they steal for drugs, but they did.

When we came out, some underwear, T-shirts and my leather jacket were all that remained.

Crackhead #1: Hey, we rolling in the rock tonight!

Crackhead #2: Damn, CD players, deodorant, toothpaste, money, we scored.

Crackhead #1: Go get Tyrone. Get him in on this shit.

Crackhead #2: Get it all...wait, not that. Holy shit, look at that thing.

Crackhead #1: Damn, I though I was on crack. Motherfucker wearing that got to be on the good stuff. Search the pockets.

Crackhead #2: I ain't touching it. You do it.

Crackhead #1: Not me.



We've been together ever since.

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*I love the word hijinks. It's so sort of 1950s. Like vivacious.

**To be fair, we had been drinking a lot that weekend.