XOLATEM
Full Access Member
Oh my Dear Lord In Heaven....omg...
I reckon you could call that an accelerated break-in of the coat....
You know...the way things sometimes seem to be heading...like with people running around with tattered jeans that they BOUGHT NEW with BIG BUCKS...( I am still trying to wrap my head around that...)...
You probably could have shipped that coat up north...probably to new york city...to some 'fashion' guru...slapped a registered trademark on it and make a deal to 'distress' a few more coats and make enough money to build a 'fashion' coat manufacturing plant....
You reminded me of a childhood story...
So...here I am...around seven or eight years of age...and it must have been around early Autumn and the weather was cold enough during the day to wear a fairly new over-coat that had fuzzy on the inside...
The Folks had some friends over the house and they had brought along their son who was about my age...
Well....the adults gravitated to the living room...(that nobody actually 'lives' in...they just sit and chat for a while and then it becomes an off-limits furniture museum the rest of the time...)
...and that left us boys to fend for ourselves in the kitchen...well...Dad and I had built a kitchen fixture...he called it a 'Bar'...but what it had become was a central gathering spot for family gatherings...and us kids used it for a lot of sit-down meals when we didn't use the more formal Dining Room...
Anyway...so...the boy and I occupied ourselves with playing 'Bar'...
we would look through the kitchen cabinets and pull out all sorts of stuff and mix it in a glass of water and dare each other to drink it...
Don't forget about the 'coat' part of the story...it is coming up...
Well...the boy and I ...we get bored with playing 'Bar'...and decide to go outside...it was still daylight and a nice, sunny, chilly, Fall afternoon...
Now you gotta picture this....The Folks and I...we lived on a one-lane neighborhood road with woods on the other side of the road and also in the back yard of the house...lots of hardwood trees and underbrush...and I had a pack of matches in my pocket....
We go into the woods...and decide to make a campfire....
I am wearing my fairly new coat...with the fuzzy stuff inside...and it is a little too heavy to have it zipped up for the temperature...so it is open in the front...
We clear out a small spot for out campfire and find some stuff that looks like it will burn and pile it in the center of the bare spot...
Well...being kids and not Boy Scouts...we did not have a good grasp on what makes a good fire...so...what we were burning flamed up and then started dying out before we were satisfied with our fire....
We desperately look around for something that will 'save' our fire...and I found a gas can...an old gas can...the round, ribbed, galvanized type that had a twist-off cap...
Why that gas can was out there in the woods in the middle of nowhere...I am still wondering....but I have come to the conclusion it must have been Divine Providence giving me an opportunity to learn a good lesson....
I figure out how to unscrew the cap and upend that can over the dying-out flames and a few drips come out of that can and what must have been a good dose of fumes....
WHHHOOOOMMPP...!!!!
That joker went off like some kind of pyrotechnic device and blew us kids back into reality about what we were doing...!!!
Stunned...about what just happened...and seeing little fires all around us....we start stomping like mad...
We decide to get the hell outta there...before we do anything else....
Well....when that thing blew up...it must have blown open my unzipped coat...and all of the little brown fuzzies had turned into little black balls...I didn't notice it until much later....but kept that observation under wraps....
Months later...Dad noticed that my coat looked like someone had taken a Zippo lighter to it...Bic lighters had not been invented yet...and asked me about it...
I feigned ignorance...never told a soul...until now...
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