I’m in Fourth Grade. All winter I’ve had to wear this ugly, faded, oversized dark green and blue hoodie. As with most of my clothes, I wish I could tell you where it came from – probably a hand-me-down that even my unfashionable teenage brothers refused. It’s the only item of clothing I have that is sufficiently warm enough to satisfy my mom as I walk out the door each morning. And I live in the Mojave Desert, so the warm jacket bar is pretty low.
Then one blessed day, I realized I have misplaced it. It’s not at home. It’s not in the Lost and Found. It’s not anywhere. I have unintentionally, but gratefully lost my ugly jacket. And with that realization, I have been liberated. The second part of my life has begun. I am free to dress like me again – the gangly, lower-middle class fourth-grader who hasn’t quite mastered the art of doing her own hair. I may be cold, but I am at peace.
Until three weeks later…
Our class is walking a single file line around the school building when Caden Flemming points to a small, muddy heap in the schoolyard.
“Isn’t that your jacket, Katie?”
I turn around and two horrifying thoughts strike me in that moment. First off, that is most definitely my jacket. Only now it’s devolved into a crusty, sun-rotted even sorrier excuse for a textile. And second, apparently my identity is so connected with that hideous soul-sucking mass that I can already see a few of my classmates nodding in affirmation.
Now, I haven’t told many bold-faced lies in my life, but honesty in this moment will throw me right back into the clutches of shame I had so recently escaped from…multiplied, this time, by the reek of irrigation water and colony or two of maggots. So with all the casual boldness a ten-year-old can muster, I simply respond with a solid
“Nope.”
And keep on walking.