I Forgot

I’ve admitted before that petty thieving is one of my besetting sins.

It’s a temptation that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. Nothing major. I don’t have the guts to be a bank robber, a stock trader, or a CEO, but I’ve been known to steal little things, things I can palm, or sneak away with.

There’s a reason I bring this up.

I’ll get to it later.

Friday I planned to have lunch with an old friend. We’d set this up before Christmas but postponed it till now because of the pressure of other holiday activities. I’d bought her a Christmas present which I intended to hand her after lunch, a lunch where we talked mostly about writing (She’s preparing an autobiography and wanted some tips about getting it published).

She is one of the three or four people who read my blog and she told me how she’d laughed about my story of my mysterious limp a couple of days ago.

That lead to our talking about memory and how I’m becoming more and more forgetful. I wonder if I’m developing what my grandmother used to call Galloping Senility, after all I am over 70 now, and the specter of Alzheimer’s takes on a haunting solidity at my age.

We ate lunch at a restaurant I’d never been to before, one way across town on the south side of the River, about 18 miles from my home. Our table overlooked a marina where millionaires tie up their yachts. It had been cool when I drove Ginny to work so I could have the car for the day and I wore my favorite jacket.

Let me tell you about my favorite jacket: when I was a little kid World War II was still going on and of course every movie featured heroic American airmen wearing leather flight jackets. We called them Bombardier Jackets. Brown leather. Pockets all over. Cool leather collar that you could snap a fur lining on. Zippers and snaps and epaulets on each shoulder where you could stick your flight gloves through when you weren’t wearing them.

The jacket that won the war.

John Wayne wore this kind of jacket.

I wanted one.

All the guys wanted one.

My parents could not afford to buy me one.

I spent my entire deprived childhood without a Bombardier’s Jacket. Even went off to college without ever owning one. Got married (twice) wearing something else.

Then, about five years ago at a garage sale, I spotted a Bombardier’s Jacket—slightly worn. Well, more than slightly. Torn in places. Shine rubbed off the leather. Holes in the pockets. Ripped lining and the fleece stuff inside comes out in puffs. Looked like the jacket had been worn by some guy on the ground during a bombing.

New, a World War II style airman’s jacket costs upwards of $400; My wonderful garage sale jacket cost me a quarter. Not a quarter of $400, but a quarter of a dollar. 25 cents.

My wife, who is not known for her fashion sense, says I was overcharged.

In the five or six years I have proudly worn My Jacket, it has not grown any less shabby. But if a Bombardier Jacket is good enough for John Wayne, it’s good enough for John Cowart.

So, my friend and I sit on this sunny deck, eating shrimp, sipping tea, watching yachts bob in the river, talking about writing, diaries, and life.

The glare off the water flashes in my eyes.

The sunlight in the open air warms me up. I take off My Jacket and place it in a nearby chair on the deck. It lays there in a wad looking like a rag without my robust manly body to fill it out.

As we discuss the autobiography, my friend observes that the people in our lives are like a tree: Some are leaves, they hang around for a while then blow away. Some are branches, more substantial than leaves, they seem solid for a season, then they break off leaving stumps. Then there are tree-trunk people rooted deep in the earth, permanent fixtures in your life, they are going to be there for you not to be shaken till the hurricane of death itself uproots them.

She said it’s important to recognize what kind of tree part the people around us represent. She said recently she valued someone as a trunk, but he turned out to be a leaf.

Now, when we went up on the deck, I’d left my pipe and tobacco pouch on the dash of the car. I was ready for a smoke. We went down to the parking lot and a truck had me blocked in so I had to maneuver around him, then I drove to drop her back at her house. Then I drove back to my house and about halfway home I realized that I had forgot to giver her that Christmas present.

Tough.

Before I got across the river, I had to turn on the car’s air conditioner. That’s Florida weather for you—19 degrees last Sunday, over 80 today.

Got home. Put the Christmas present on the table. Got undressed to shower and shave to meet Ginny. Reached for my matches. They are in My Jacket pocket…

My Jacket!

My Jacket is still 18 miles away across the river on the chair at that restaurant which is called ???

What was the name of that place?

I forgot.

About that time I realized that Ginny’s cell phone was in My Jacket’s pocket. I’d forgotten that. Now, I had panicked visions of somebody finding My Jacket, taking out the cell phone and placing call after call to Dakar. And we’d get the bill!

I just can’t remember the name of that restaurant!

Called my friend to ask her the name of where we’d just had lunch. She didn’t know either, just that nice new place on the river. She called somebody she knew and found out the name. She called the restaurant. The waitress said she’d found this rag—My Jacket. Since the place was closer to her house, my friend drove to pick it up and said she’d meet me on this side of the river in Orange Park where she had an afternoon appointment anyhow.

I quickly got dressed again and headed out to drive the ten miles to Orange Park. About half way there, I thought, “I’ll give her the Christmas present I forgot when we… O Crap. I’d forgot and left the present on the table at my house”.

She turned into the abandoned filling station off I-295 just ahead of me. So I met her car and retrieved My Jacket…

Ginny’s cell phone was still in the pocket.

Thanks be to God!

Drove back from Orange Park, past my house, and across the north side of town to pick Ginny up from work.

When we got home, the forgotten Christmas present still sat on the table… I’ll give it to my friend next year… Unless I forget again.

What does all this rambling about things I forgot to remember have to do with the life-long problem of stealing that I started out writing about?

Well, in my mind it relates to the single most important prayer in the Bible.

When Jesus was crucified, He was nailed up between two thieves?

The Gospels do not tell us the age of these thieves.

I think one of them could have been an old thief, a 70-year-old thief—a guy like me.

He’s the one who prayed, “Lord, remember me…”