Too Abstract To Fit

Okay, here I go with another story that revolves around me walking the dog.

The cold part of winter has finally arrived in Minnesota, but the snow hasn't. So I had to go through the closet to find a warmer jacket to wear when I took Poncho for his nightly jaunt past all the Christmas lights I want to see,

But the fact is, the weather right now feels more like an Iowa winter to me. There is even a form of precipitation that I call it "Iowa" (I used to call it "God Pissing"). Basically, "Iowa" is any mixture of snow, sleet, and rain with a lot of wind. It's this nebulous, gloomy form of precipitation that was a part of Iowa winter and spring and has been migrating north more and more with each winter I pass here in Minnesota.

So it was Iowaing again tonight. As I was fumbling through the closet I stumbled across my old Grinnell letter jacket, which I am pretty sure I have not worn since the last cold spring day of 1994. But I figured "What the hell, I might as well wear it. It is Iowaing outside, afterall.

I was surprised that I still had the jacket. I don't when I last thought its fate, much less if I should try it on. So I tried it on tonight, figuring it would bring back memories of college, since I wore it on every cold day in college (it was my only winter jacket). But whatever memories are attached to that jacket are as accessible as my college 5k and 8k times. They are simply to remote and abstract to even conceptualize.

The only thought I had was, "How the hell was this my winter coat for four years? It's too light!" So I thought I'd try it out for Poncho's walk and see if the jacket was now too cold for me, which would be a sign I'm getting soft in my old age. I wore this jacket at a time in my life when I believed scarves, gloves, and knit hats were pretentious accessories for blue-blooded pretty boys. I have since come to realize using these accessories make winter here almost pleasant.

But I'm shitting you negative, that jacket kept me adequately warm during tonight's walk. I forgot one thing about the jacket though. The sleeves have a vinyl shell and in really cold weather they stiffen up big time. This always makes feel like I'm a robot which makes me happy, even if it does feel like it's four degrees outside.

I'm finding it harder and harder to find things to spark my memory from things between two and fifteen years ago. The weird thing is I can stumble across all sorts of smells, sounds, and sights from my childhood in Texas and I involuntarily feel like suddenly I'm seven or 17 years-old. But I can't figure out why it's so hard to unearth being 27. Time just seems to be speeding up more and the last decade just seems to be blur while my first 18 years of life seem like a still-life.