Eulogy to Coat

I still want an olive green coat so bad. Recently, somebody told me it was a symbol of being a millennial. And I almost punched them. I'm kidding! I love being a millennial. And I loved that olive thing to bits. I purchased it in 2012, in the Japanese department store conglomerate LUMINE in Omiya Saitama, either on floor 2 or floor 3, from a store called either Snidel, or JEANASIS, or One After Another Nice Claup. Yes, these are names for stores. It was a brand I had never bought anything from before or will ever buy another thing from again. I tend to do that. I still remember, I circled around in that little section over and over for like, 3 hours. In desperation to find a winter coat that wasn't too fat, or too thin, or too expensive. After looking and trying on about a million things, my eyes were starting to get blurry and my legs hurt like hell. And then I found the PERFECT coat. It looked like this:

“Who cares what people think?” A friend said this to me, in response to me wanting a pair of boots that resembled giant teddy bear feet but being too ashamed of it. But I care too much, I'm afraid. I will never be able to wear teddy bear shoes in public. I cared so much that I looked for 3 hours just so the coat would not only be cute to me but acceptable to others. It's a thing I'm trying to change. I cared so much that I cut off the coyote fur trimmings on the olive coat, because I found out they were coyote fur. And didn't want people to think I liked killing coyotes and putting their fur on to parade around*.

It is an understatement to say that I loved that coat. Ever since I got it, I wore it over and over and over. I couldn't take it off to switch up my outfits even when I wanted to. And this was a big deal because I really liked switching up outfits! I wore it from late 2012 to early 2020. It had become a part of my skin. Ew, I know, that's gross. You can't have cotton and polyester-filled skin! But really, that was how close I felt to it! I don't understand people who don't form attachment to their clothing and just toss them away as soon as they're tired of looking at them. Your coats are in some ways closer to you than your significant other! They're with you all day long! Even your underwear gets a break from you, because you don't wear the same one everyday, I hope. That coat and I shared a very close relationship. I wouldn't say it was my best best-friend ever, but our friendship definitely exceeded that of me and my ex-boyfriend in 2012. I'd like to think so, anyway. I can't be sure if it had a spirit so it could actually reciprocate the friendship. But it felt like it had one. An olive-colored, fluffy spirit. I planned on wearing it forever, until the end of time*. I thought it was so perfect that it didn't ever need to be replaced. It's madness that we have to replace our stuff.

It came to its end in the beginning of 2020. The iron-on patch I used to cover up the first oil stain from a cookie I'd put in the pocket, kept falling off, and I had gotten another stain on the other pocket. I'd put another cookie in that one. And now I had gotten yet another stain on the wrist, for mysterious reasons. The wrist cuffs are so worn out and tattered up as if I'd scrubbed the floor with it. I reluctantly put Coat in our local recycling bin. I like to imagine that the fabric scraps were used to make someone's car seat cover. That sort of makes me feel better.

I hate losing favorite items. Yes, my coat had a nice and fully lived life of 8 years. It's seen day and it's seen night and it's seen the city and it's seen the country, it's seen Asia and it's seen North America. If it were a person, it'd have lived 80 years and smoked pipes and drank whiskey everyday of its life. But the thing is, I didn't think it would leave me one day. I'd never anticipated on it dying on me, at all. I wanted that thing to last forever. I wanted it to accompany me into old age and one day be passed down to my grand children (or grand dogs and cats since I'm not having kids). Why don't they warn us, when we buy things, that our things aren't going to be with us forever?

I remember looking at the blue recycle bin, and feeling a sudden sense of panic. Oh no! I'll never see my olive coat again! Should I crawl into it and get it back? It was one of those darn metal containers that was always closed by default. And when you opened it to put your stuff in, it falls inside of this shovel-like container that's attached to the opening, and temporarily, your stuff is still visible. You still had a chance to take it all back. You stand there pondering, should I take it all back? But you can't stay here forever. You had to close it back up at some point. And as you did that, the stuff you once loved, gets dropped somewhere deep inside of the bin. “Pong!” it would make a sound that echoed, as if saying: “Your stuff will never to be seen againnn!”. And the shovel-like structure acts like a door, and completely shuts off any access to whatever has fallen inside. Oh boy. This design makes it impossible for people to dig through. It's also a take-backer's worst nightmare. You had to commit to saying goodbye to whatever you decided to put in there. Or you could be like me and consider crawling in to get it back, which is insane. Right before I was about to do it, I remembered that one poor fella on the news who fell asleep inside of one of those in the middle of winter and then died. RIP.

Is it such a crime to wear the same clothes over and over? Why do you want to do that so badly, you ask? Maybe subconsciously, I wanted my long lost friends to still recognize me if they saw me on the street many years later. I want them to go: “Hey! Isn't that old Moo? I haven't seen her in ages! And OMG I can't believe she's still wearing the same damn coat from (insert snack outing we were at together in one of the years between 2012 to 2020)!”

I want it to be like, if you looked at a photo of me from 2019, it'd be almost exactly the same as one you'd see me in from 2026. I still have the same scarf, the same pants, the same earmuffs, even the same shoes. The only thing missing is that coat. But of course, there's been other major changes like how I wear a hair-scarf everyday now, which morphs my head into the shape of a dumpling, which changes my silhouette quite drastically, which is even more reason why I should be wearing the exact same coat!

I used to look for a replacement everywhere I turned, but after years of failed attempts, I gave up and made do with other types of coats. About 6 years had passed since Coat's passing, and I thought I'd forgotten about it. A few months ago at Simons (department store in Canada), I spotted something in an overwhelmingly familiar shade of moss green. Was this my coat?? I got super excited and quickly put it on. It ended at the hip, and it had a padding inside which wasn't too fat or too thin. Other than the lack of coyote fur trimmings and the subtly more modernized cut, it looked just like old Coat. I wanted it instantly! The price was an astounding 400 dollars Canadian. My logical mind tells me: Stop this none-sense at once! When you bought your old one, you were in Japan, that was more than ten years ago, and it was suited for Saitama weather, specifically when the temperature is always above zero even in deep Winter, not Southern Ontario when you have two months of minus 10 AND there's a blizzard every week. Oh and, you do not have 400 dollars just sitting around!

But mind, how do you explain the fact I wore that old one in Canada, AFTER I had gotten back for like 5 winters in a row? I just layered with 50 sweaters underneath, that's how. I didn't care that I looked like a stuffed bun about to burst. I didn't care that I also looked visibly wet because the cotton shell didn't repel any snow. I still stubbornly wore it everywhere. On the bus, to classes, to work.

I trusted that coat. It had seen me transition out of being a young person ping-ponging between a variety of half-baked relationships, to someone who slightly resembles a fully grown adult human in a functional relationship. It moved with me all the way to Canada. It had seen me through art school, through my job at the gift shop, through my job as a library page, and through my job at the dry-cleaning place. And it survived a major oil stain in 2015, a major coffee spill in 2017, a major minor weight gain in 2018 (psychological major, physically minor), and yet another major oil stain in 2019.

I wasn't always proud when I wore this coat. Sometimes it had caused me shame. I had worn it once in Tokyo in 2017 on the subway, and distinctly felt like a delinquent because my wrist cuffs were scratched up compared to everyone else's pristine clean wrist cuffs. Yet, I STILL kept wearing this thing.

During the duration of having Coat, at least a thousand sandwiches were eaten, a few relationships formed and then fell apart. The coat stayed in tact. It is a freaking hero. I'm sad I didn't cut a piece of it out to remind myself of its existence. I could not replace it. 8 years of memories would be too much expectation to put on the new coat. I left Simons empty handed. Then I came back a few months later, only to see the $400 dollar coat on sale at a whopping 70% off! It's reasonable now! Actually, it's even cheaper than the original coat I bought back in 2012. Miraculous! But I still couldn't bring myself to buy it, somehow. It felt wrong. It would be like if I saw someone who looked just like an ex boyfriend at Simons, and then going right up and asking “Hey cheap guy! Wanna be my boyfriend? You're like, the spitting image of my ex!” ... Deep down, I know what I really miss is that version of myself in 2012, I miss the friends I had in 2012, I miss the relationships that formed and then fell apart in 2012. If I wore this new coat, it wouldn't bring any of them back. Maybe, I should just let Coat go. Rest in Peace, Coat, even if it's been 6 years since you got thrown into the recycling bin. I hope you are being used in a nice car seat cover for someone's butt out there. And I hope that person is just as happy as I was.

*It didn't occur to me when I bought it. Thought it was fake fur since in Canada they only use fake fur on those things.

*Oh my God! I finally understand why Marilyn Monroe said diamonds are her best-friend! It's because they don't fall apart! Gee, and I was judging her for being gaudy. I'm no different, really. In fact, she's smarter because Instead of diamonds, I chose olive-drab coloured cotton-nylon coats that are probably car seats now. But hey, I still like it!