This morning, I held my breath and nervously pulled up a pair of size 2 Express Editor pants. They zipped and buttoned perfectly fine. I pulled on a thin pink ribbed 3/4 length knit shirt, an Express small, and that fit, too. Yay, I’m back in my skinny clothes! I mean, they could fit better, but at least they’re don-able. On my way out I grabbed a light leather jacket from the hall closet.

I can’t wear a leather jacket without a line from this guy’s email running through my head. Some years ago, I was doing my own thing and was stopped by a female acquaintance. She asked me whether I was seeing someone, and I told her not at the moment. She said one of her friends was interested in me, and had asked her to find out some stuff about me. So I guess her tactful way of doing it was just coming out and asking me. I was flattered, so that led me to exchange a few emails with this friend of hers. In one email, he complained about having a headache. He further explained that he had a headache because he’d gone to an outdoors concert event the night before, and “was banged around for an hour in a leather jacket.” My mental reaction now is the same as it was the time I read it, i.e. ??? Assuming he did not mean that people tied him up in a leather strait jacket and beat him senseless with a bat for an hour, I guess he wore a leather jacket in a moshing-like environment. But what’s the leather jacket have to do with his headache? Does banging on a leather jacket cause some kind of chemical reaction, like two molecules hitting each other? Maybe the force of the impacts releases some kind of toxic gas that gives people headaches. Maybe the sound created from banging on leather emits such a deep echo that it gives the wearer a headache.

Or maybe, just maybe, he was s t r e t c h i n g to brag about the fact that he owns a leather jacket, shoving that fact into a story that really has no relevance to the fact at all. Which just makes it kinda sad and pathetic. I’ve come to learn that people who do, or people who are, even people who have, don’t need to talk about it. Typically, people who talk are overcompensating for what they don’t or aren’t or haven’t.