Months ago, before I got serious about losing weight Western had “Operation Historic Moment” when we announced that we had received a record gift for our new medical school. As part of this we had a public unveiling of the gift and as such I had to dress up more than I have in a very long time.

For me to be in a suit and tie would require someone to die, barring death, perhaps a wedding of blood kin would be enough as well. So I had to dress up and it struck me that I could go half-way and pull off a black dress vest and a very nice button-down shirt with black slacks. It’s a look that even XXL men like me can pull off and not look like we’re wearing a tent. So off I went, with my heft and found at the venerable JC Penney’s this particular vest pictured above. It’s a black dress vest from Stafford. Paired with a nice shirt it wowed all my coworkers who never thought they’d see me in a nice shirt, a tie, or >GASP< all clean and dressed up nicely.

After the event, I put the vest in my closet and pretty much forgot about it. Then I decided to lose all this weight and over the intervening months I was pawing through my closet and ran across it again. I put it on and laughed. What was tight was now very roomy; I had lost enough weight where I could start wearing fine clothes like this and not feel like a blue whale being strained through linen. So I’ve been dragging it out into rotation every once in a while and I quite enjoy the entire style of it.

This morning it came to a head while I was standing in my hallway under my old-time Edison-light hall fixture:

That I was occupying the same space and time as my 2nd-great-grandfather Fernando Race. Or at least I imagine that bulbs like these, the ones that are very old and cast a wonderfully warm yellow light on everything were the ones that might have lit him from above as well. So I stood there for a few moments taking in the old light style, the vest, which is definitely a retro fashion and chuckled to myself that I am standing at a collision between super-cool futuretech and equally cool bygone style.

So today while eating my lunch I noticed little seams where two small pockets appear to be, but they are sewn closed. I laughed at the stupidity of putting dressing that leads one to think there are pockets there on a flat sheet of fabric. I ran my index finger along the seam and discovered that a part of the stitching that ran along the fake pocket was coming unravelled. It was enough space for me to explore using my index finger and I discovered that it isn’t a faux pocket at all, but a true pocket – finished and everything! So I snipped away the remaining seams on both sides and now I have a better vest than when I initially bought it. Now it has two functional, and whats more, finished pockets!

Which then begs the question that plagues me: WHY THE HELL WERE THEY SEWN SHUT!?! Why go to all the trouble to install and finish perfectly functional vest pockets and then sew them shut! I cannot understand the logic behind this move by Stafford. It was a cheap vest, so perhaps it was a factory second, a mistake. But even then, who the hell accidentally sews pockets closed? It takes a modicum of will to finish a pocket and then more to perfectly try to sew them shut! ODD!

Of course now that I have a nice dress vest with functioning pockets, and a certain romance about the past bouncing around in my head, obviously I went all the way to this:

I’m thinking it would round out the look and it isn’t terribly expensive. It’s the kind of thing that nobody needs, but would really serve well to confuse people when they meet me. He has a pocket watch and an iPhone. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH HIM.

I thrive on that entire idea. It entertains me enough where buying and enjoying the watch may be absolutely perfect. Evil Cackle 🙂 And no, I’m not going to ask people what they think because they’d likely declare I’m silly. And all right, I’ll be silly. But I’m fine with going that way. For nothing more, it’s agonizingly romantic!