Here's part 3. I would have posted it on Friday, but apparently Diaryland.com's server was down. Click here to start at part 1.

Now as I mentioned in the beginning, the jacket I was showing Gloria USED to have pins. How how the pins came off is an interesting story.

I think it was around the time that I had finished college and moved back in with my parents, before I got my career started and moved back out again. I woke up one day and came downstairs to find all those pins sitting on the kitchen table. It took me a second to recognize them, because seeing them there was a little surreal. It's like seeing your car's steering wheel on the kitchen table: you definitely recognize what it is, but your mind then whirls as you stand still and think "What the hell is going on? What the hell is happening right now to the car?" If these were the pins, then where the FUCK was the jacket? I was sincerely tempted to write that question on the surface of the kitchen table with a permanent marker. That's how enraged I was. But I gained enough ground to use a piece of paper instead, with a an arrow pointing to the pins. "Where the hell is the jacket that there were on?!?"

Well I found the answer. My mother had taken all of them off, preparing the jacket to be thrown to Goodwill. "I thought you'd want to save the pins." Gee, that's consideration for ya. Save the PINS?! "I can't FUCKING BELIEVE YOU! Don't you have ANY idea what sentimental value that jacket has? Don't you remember how much I idolized that fucking thing, how much of a part of my teenage years that was?" Her ignorance blew my mind. I suppose there's the possiblity that she was playing dumb, and still wanted that thing gone without me noticing, but that would be even nastier on her part.

But I did get a hold of the jacket. It was still safe, not to be taken away. And I still have it, hanging up in my closet, all the way to one end against the side wall. It's a piece of adolescent rage, typical non-conformity, and both the good and bad of past na�vety. But it was definitely all me.