The course of true love runs orange

Found this entry from a month ago. I guess I started it during finals and forgot about it.

Last night, I trudged home from the coffee shop in the dark, a little tired and a little cold, with a head full of rhetoric. I came to the weirdo intersection at the top of my block, and turned onto crooked Clark Street behind a couple, probably in their 50s. This couple was fairly nondescript, except for the one thing I noticed immediately - they had on the same coat. It was a grey coat, one of those deals with the protective outer layer and probably a fleece liner underneath. It had embellishments of orange and a dark blue covering the shoulders; and a detachable hood, which the woman was wearing and the man had apparently removed.

I walked right behind this couple, thinking several things: First, I thought that they were ridiculous (could they not go to the trouble of finding their own coats?), then I thought that I would never be caught dead in matching coats with anyone, then I wondered if they had the same size coat, then I wished I had a hood on my own coat, and so on etc. There were kids my age walking behind me, and I could hear the girl teasing her boyfriend and asking if he was going to get a peacoat that matched hers. I wrinkled my nose, and wanted to turn around and frown at them. Suddenly, I realized that the matching coats weren't offending me at all. Maybe I even liked the matching coats. Even now, I think of those two and it's nice. They didn't care how they looked, which is an anomaly these days.

So hooray for nerdy middle age. I don't know if I'd ever go so far as to have matching coats, but far be it from me to judge...