Members Only

I stepped out to 64 degrees this morning. It was glorious after the long hot summer we've had in Houston. It took me back to the day in seventh grade when it was finally cool enough to don my "Members Only" jacket. It was deep purple with an inside vest pocket and those cool shoulder straps that all you 80's fans know and love. Yes, I see you smiling.


And no, that's not me in the photo, it's some playwrite named Rob I found on the net. Mine was purple like his.

I'd worked hard that summer in the tobacco fields and saved enough money to buy all my school clothes. I bought a pair of Nike's - no more "Trax" from K-mart for this kid. And I bought that "Members Only" jacket, it was my prized posession, and even now, at 37, I think about that coat when the first cool air of fall hits.

You see, that coat was about a lot of things. It was the reward of hard work, a struggle for identity, and "fitting in" with other kids. To a degree, it was about independence because my mother didn't like it.

I wore that coat when it was really too hot to wear a coat. I wore it when it was really too cold and I should've been wearing my heavy coat. I wore it to high school football games, I wore it the night I kissed a girl under the bleachers, I wore it the night I first smoked a cigarette, and I wore it to the party where I slow danced to Truly by Lionel Richie.

Like so many things of my adolescence, the coat is gone but the memory remains, as crisp and clear as those glorious 64 degrees this morning. Did you ever have a coat like mine?