Don't talk back to the jacket

First of all, I stink at selfies, so don't judge. This one shows that my hair is still thin on top where I singed it, but that's not the point. The point is the jacket.

What is it about this jacket? It's just a cheapo faux leather thing that I picked up on clearance--nothing really special at all, but every stinking time I wear it I get compliments all over the place, including from total strangers in the grocery store. "Nice jacket," they say. On Sunday an oldish man at church said it was pretty. (Not the word I would have chosen.) The first time I wore it, a student said, "You should wear that more often." (A student!) And this morning a colleague told me it makes me look like Badass Bev, which was good timing since I was on my way to a class where I needed to hold the line against a flood of excuses, which is hard to do when I'm dressed in kindly grandmother garb.

I don't get it. No one comments when I wear fuzzy red socks to match my sweater or a startling purple scarf to liven up a ho-hum outfit, but all I have to do is throw on this chunk of synthetic polymer extruded from a machine and all of a sudden I'm a compliment magnet. Maybe it's just because this jacket is so different from my other teaching clothes, so dressing like this every day would make the compliments dry up. I need to wear it strategically, save it for those moments when Badass Bev needs to make an appearance. Tomorrow I'll be back to my usual boring wardrobe; today, though, you'd better not mess with me unless you're carrying a heap of compliments.