My yellow ski jacket

I've always liked that yellow ski jacket of mine. I think I've owned it for quite some time; in fact for many, many years. It predates the fall of the Soviet Union, the advent of cell phones and of the internet. I got it, I believe in 1987.

This Killy ski jacket has many pockets, so many, in fact, that it's impossible to remember which objects you've placed inside them and where they are. I once took a spectacular spill while skiing, and my car and other important keys that were inside one of its unzipped pockets went flying into deep snow while I somersaulted on a steep hill; I never was able to find them again.

A few years ago, that jacket mysteriously disappeared from my ski closet. I asked my wife if she knew where it could be and she couldn't come up with a good answer. A few days later, she said she had recovered it, somewhere, inside the house. I was so relieved and so grateful to her for relocating my cherished ski garment!

Truth is that, when it suddenly vanished, she had brought it to one of the local consignment stores to get rid of it. She had never been fond of its blinding bright-yellow color. When she finally told me the truth, she added that the jacket had languished for over six month inside the consignment shop without finding any taker. In the store manager's own words, the item was “just unsellable.”

I still like the jacket, I think it looks great (it was still made in France, not in China) but hearing the last part of that story is beginning to erode my resolve to clinging to it. As a consoling solution, my wife suggested that I might still wear it when I'd clear the snow around the house...