-Donkey

After dinner... waking up and popping out for a smoke, perhaps, grab the sweater hanging next to the door. Buttons mostly missing and hole in the shoulder, it's a dark blue. Mom found it one of the first years of her annual search for Christmas cardigan sweaters. It's pretty thin, really. Not much of a sweater, but it's a friend of mine by now.

And that sweater that you knitted me last winter... it's the one I wear all the time. Keeps me warm. I always wear it when I'm watching TV. Keeps me warm.

-Breakfast With Amy

Of course, there's no sweater hanging next to the door, because I haven't gotten a coatrack.

But I fantasize about it. I ponder the possibilities with shopping online, finding coatrack.com and exploding with delight. I visit the Salvation Army Thrift Shop and admire this old coatrack, telling me stories about how it once worked for a doctor. Held umbrellas too, and it's proud, duty fulfilled and all that. It's shiny-ish -- which is to say it was once shiny, but now it's scratched up, flaking chrome like my old bike is or would be by now. No umbrella duty, I think to myself. Only one I have (only one I can find easily) is in the truck and it stays there. My house isn't a waiting room.

So to speak.