|  Bob Batz Read Bob's bio and previous columns
May 22, 2009
My Wife’s Love Affair With
430-Pound Coats
I was loafing around the house the other day when my first
wife said, “Hey, can you do me a little favor?”
Sally often asks me things like that, and the only problem is there’s never
anything little about her favors.
“Sure, I’d love to,” I lied, dreading what was about to come.
“Would you mind carrying these winter coats down to the basement for me so
there is room in the closet for my spring things?” she said, pointing to a
pile of coats on the living room sofa.
Let me interject right here that my wife absolutely adores
coats. At last count, she had enough coats to fill the display racks at
every female apparel store in America. She has red coats, blue coats, beige
coats, green coats, white coats and black coats. Six closets in our modest
two-bedroom love nest in the suburbs overflow with Sally’s coats.
Other coats dangle from hangers in the basement or are
scattered haphazardly elsewhere in the house.
Sally has her own set of rules when it comes to buying a new coat. First and
foremost, the coat must be attractive and affordable. Second of all, the
coat must weigh at least 430 pounds.
Lightweight coats – those tipping the scales at less than 430 pounds –
rarely make it into her imposing collection.
When most people pick up a copy of the morning newspaper they
begin by reading the front page, then they go on to the sports section and
maybe the classified ads. When Sally reads a newspaper, she begins by
furiously thumbing through it until she finds the ads for women’s clothing –
particularly coats.
“Hey, look,” she tells me, “so-and-so is having a fabulous,
once-in-a-lifetime sale on spring outerwear. You wanna go shopping today?”
I’ve never found coat-shopping to be all that exciting. I
mean, let’s face it, if you’ve seen one coat, you’ve seen them all.
I find it enjoyable and challenging to shop for, say, fishing lures, because
there are so many different kinds and colors. Shopping for coats, on the
other hand, is about as exciting as a stifled yawn.
The other bad thing about coats is they are seasonal and have to be rotated
on a regular basis. Sally wouldn’t think of wearing a so-called winter
coat in the spring or a so-called spring coat in the winter.
Shopping for coats with her can be a nightmare, too.
“Does this coat make me look fat?” she asks, twirling like a ballerina in
front of the department store mirror.
“Probably not seeing as how you weigh 86 pounds,” I reply
with a sigh.
So there we were, husband and wife, standing hand-in-hand as we gazed at a
mountain of coats I would soon be lugging into the basement.
“What do you think I should do with all these beautiful
coats?” Sally asked.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
Contact Bob at bbatz@woh.rr.com
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