Blue Jacket
Can giving teach you how to spend?
I gave away a rain jacket a few weeks ago. I liked the jacket a lot, but it felt good to give it to someone in need.
I had a cold, wet bike ride about a week later. Nothing terrible, but it did motivate me on the shopping front. I started browsing thrift stores and estate sales.
I found a nice one that used to belong to a lady who was about my size (except in the shoulders when bending). It smelled like grandparents' camper at the lake smelled like--which for me was a positive. It also was surprisingly warm and the tag mentioned down was inside the flannel lining.
The color was strangly my exact preference for rain jackets, Royal Blue. Sitting in Kaufman stadium during a Royals rain delay in a poncho had wedged hard and fast a concept that it would be real bonus to have a good rain jacket that could do fan-duty at a Royals game. In my adult life I don't think I have ever been at a Royals game in the rain, but my preferences seem set on this.
My guess is the jacket was forty or more years old, but made of better stuff than anything I'd want to buy new. I got it for $4.
I bought it but have loosely kept looking. I would like to have one that let my shoulders roam a little more and buttoned on the "correct" side.
For the moment I haven't had luck second hand. Yesterday I happened to be close to REI, where my first jacket was from. I found a similar jacket, but it was three times what I remember paying for my previous one. Obviously inflation has been hitting the gym hard in recent years and it is possible this was in some way a more premium model from the same brand.
Still, I had a hard enough time giving away jacket that cost about $60 eight years ago. I don't want to put myself through facing a homeless person in the rain with a jacket on me that cost near $200. It's like squatting down to a weight bar with three times the weight you just cleared.
So for now I may have some wet rides ahead of me till I find something easy to clean-jerk over my head.