Zipper Madness

I bought one of those long puffy coats a couple of weeks ago.  It's not the cutest coat I've ever owned, but yesterday the temperature was 9.  As in degrees.  Without the wind chill.  So full length puffy coat season it is. 

The thing is...I got my puffy on sale, at a fantastic sale price!  At Daffy's.  This means that I didn't feel too upset when I tore the sleeve on a fence two days after purchasing it.  But it also means that sometimes the zipper gets stuck and then there I am, huffing and puffing in all my sweaty puffiness trying to get the damn thing zipped.  And since it's a full length, I'm forced (in a frenzied panic of zipper rage) to bend over at the knee in order to reach the zipper.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  After my big steal at Daffy's I bounded jubilantly out of the store, emanating an all-around air of benign goodwill towards humankind.  You know, like you do after you've gotten a bargain.  Unfortunately, these moods can sometimes disintegrate shockingly quickly.

I noticed four girls on the side of the street, one of them holding up a camera attempting to take a picture.  Inspired perhaps by the high of my Daffy's bargain, I found myself blurting out, "Do you guys want me to take your picture?"  A friendly gesture.  The thing is, not only did they not want me to take their picture, they never acknowledged me or responded or said anything at all.  They simply walked away and there I was, standing there on the sidewalk, feeling like a dingleberry.  Instinctively, I turned to the person standing to my right and giggled, "I always want someone to take a picture of me when I'm on vacation..." 

"Ya, you have to be careful of that, though..." she deadpanned. 

Hmmm.  What to say?  Why not just...keep talking? 

"Ya, I might be a robber..." was the next sentence to come out of my mouth.  Yikes.  Those horrible words sort of hung in the air for a moment or two before the signal changed to "walk" and we were both released from that socially awkward moment. 

Whatever, I had my coat.  I just needed to go into Pret to pick up a sandwich before I went back into work and...yup, the girl from the street was going in, too.  Of course she would be, why in the world would she be going anywhere else?  I held the door for her.  See?  I'm not a robber...

I picked up my favorite sandwich, chicken and avocado, the same one I had eaten almost every day that week.  The girl and guy behind the counter were acting kind of, well, wacky.  "Chicken and avocado, chicken and a-vo-ca-do" he sang. 

"Yup!  Chicken and avocado."  I responded.  Well, I was on an awkward conversational roll, why not keep it up?  I even added, "I've eaten this sandwich like every day this week!" 

"Hey!  I'm the one who makes these sandwiches!"  The girl stated proudly. 

"Well, I love them."  I gushed.  (What was happening here?)

"Here, you have a good day, enjoy your sandwich, made by the best sandwich maker here..." 

Of course, the girl from the street who thought I was a camera robber was paying for her salad in the next line over, witnessing this whole bizarre exchange. 

OK, I was talking to strangers about sandwiches, I offer to take people's picture, so what?  Blame it all on my puffy coat bargain.  My guard had been significantly weakened by discount retail shopping and now I was reduced to nothing more than a friendly, blabbering fool!

The thing I notice about NY is, strangers don't really interact all that much here.  I used to try to a lot more, before I realized it's NOT in my best interest to interact with strangers in the big city.  But sometimes I just have to.  And sometimes when this happens, I am warmed by the realization that there are many decent people in this city doing lovely, neighborly deeds.  (OK, a lot of them are just perverts touching themselves dangerously close to their nether regions as they sit next to you on the train, after you've gotten the only seat left and you are so exhausted and just want to stay sitting and, wait, I have digressed...)

I'm talking about the good deeders today.  Yesterday I was on my lunch break in the public atrium near work, finishing up the sandwich that my husband had made for me the night before.  (Turkey, cheese, salami and mustard on whole wheat.)  Incidentally, why do sandwiches always taste better when they are made by other people?  As I finished my lunch and got up to leave, I saw two men eyeing my table and I beckoned to them, suddenly feeling warmhearted.  Getting a table here can sometimes feel like a competitive sport.  "I'm leaving, you can sit here!"  I offered.  (Oh, you're a good person, my inner voice whispered.) 

I stood up and quickly bent over to zip the puff, but here's the thing about a puff coat bought at a discount, it doesn't always do as it's told.  That day my puff must have had her period because she was acting downright bitchy.  Of course the zipper jammed, the fabric of the coat stuck firmly inside of it.  Crap.  "I'll be gone in just a sec, I'm leaving, just gotta get my coat zippered..."  I nervously babbled.  As I tried in vain to unzip the coat, the fabric jammed into the zipper even more. 

Long story longer, there I was, in a sea of people, wrestling with my zipper.  The poor men hadn't even sat down yet.  Strangers were just beginning to turn their heads to stare when one of the men, with a sympathetic look, took pity upon the poor wretched girl in her green puffy coat.  He kindly said, "I have one of these jackets, too, here, let me help you..." 

It occurred to me that I was letting a stranger touch my zipper.  But honestly, he seemed a friendly, nice stranger, in a public place, so it appeared to be...safe?  Unusual, bordering on creepy, embarrassing, but at least safe. 

Of course, what he probably thought would take all of half a second was stretching out into one, two, almost three minutes. At that point I started to feel hopeless, as if the zipper would never unzip and I was merely making a spectacle of myself in public, yet again.  Plus I was beginning to sweat under all that down feathered puffiness.  I thought maybe the best thing to do at this point would be for me to remove myself from this mortifying situation and brave the 9 degrees with my half opened jacket, torso to the wind.  But then, miracles of miracles, the zipper came unstuck!!!  Ah, thank God.  The man then proceeded to zip me back up, taking great care not to get the fabric caught as he did so.

"Thank you!"  I said to him.  "YOU are a good Samaritan.  You've done a good deed."

What nice men, I thought as I walked back towards work.  I must call someone and tell them.  People are nice. 

I called my husband to relay my story, but somehow it lost something in the translation.  "The nicest thing just happened!"  I gushed.  "My zipper got stuck at lunch and these men helped me unzip it and then zip it back again!" 

I guess you just had to be there.

Seriously, though, sometimes New Yorkers can be downright kind.

I hope those men weren't out of towners...

Incidentally, something similar happened to me when I was about five.  It was a snowy day and my friends and I were sledding in my backyard when my boot fell off.  I could have easily just put the boot back on myself, but I'm sad to say I ended up just laying there listlessly in the cold snow, bootless, waiting for someone to put my boot back onto my frozen foot.  My friend Leah tried in vain (and she was only 4), but she couldn't get the boot back on.  Eventually my Dad came to my rescue and got the boot back on, after I began to venture into the land of hysteria.  Seriously, we have it all on video tape.  I couldn't help but feel five years old again yesterday as a kind stranger zipped up my green puffy coat in the Food Court.  Ah well.  Some things never change...

Comments

[Keely]

I can't zip my puff coat either (seriously), but I recently discovered an easier way. The trick is to pull the jacket down as flat as you can while it's on you. Then zipping is a cinch!