Jackets

Way back in the pre-pandemic times – a century or more ago, it seems some days – the Mother Ship Campus decided that they would welcome us newly merged Home Campus denizens with some spirit wear. So they let us know the location of the online portal that had shirts and other items of clothing with the Mother Ship logo – indeed, with the new Home Campus / Mother Ship combined logo as well – and gave us each a small allowance with which to purchase such things.

On the one hand, this was a way to get us to wear their logos and rebrand ourselves without them having to do any work. And given the fact that every single employee of Home Campus – faculty, adjuncts, maintenance staff, advisors, administrative people, and all of the various deans – could be comfortably seated in either of the two lecture halls on campus with room to spare, it was fairly inexpensive.

On the other hand, this was free clothing – and rather good quality clothing at that.

So I can’t say I blame them, nor will I complain about it. It was a definite win/win all around, and there just haven’t been too many of those in recent American history. Three cheers for the Mother Ship, I say.

I ended up getting a couple of shirts and a nice fleece jacket, all with the new combined logo neatly stitched in the upper left corner. They’re really comfortable, and that’s enough of a bribe to make me wear them pretty much all the time.

They got me!

When I put in my order Kim doubted whether I would actually wear the fleece jacket, and she had precedent on her side. I had a fall-weight jacket that I wore all the time, after all. I figured I could wear the new one inside though – I’d hang it on my office chair at work for when it might be useful, since sometimes the heating at Home Campus can be idiosyncratic.

Kim especially doubted when the order actually arrived and somehow I ended up with two of these fleece jackets – the grey one I actually asked for and a black one that got tossed into the bargain. I was told to keep the extra one – it was easier than trying to return it – but now there were two jackets with no precedent for me wearing them.

And then the pandemic hit and I spent the next year and a half hanging around at home, where I have to pay for my own heat.

I have to say that while the shirts are good the jackets are just the best. They’re a bit oversized – a quality that I deeply love in clothing of any kind – and they’re soft and comfortable. I can wear them around the house all day. They have multiple deep pockets for storing things such as masks for when I venture outside in them. And since my professional wardrobe was reduced to “Zoom formal” (i.e. nice-looking from the waist up) for much of that time, they instantly transformed any outfit into something work-appropriate. Now that we’re back face to face I keep one at home and one in my office, and it’s getting back toward jacket season once again.

All in all, they were a capital acquisition.

I have no idea what will ultimately become of the union between Home Campus and the Mother Ship – the problem with higher education these days is that every halfwit politician has yet another scheme to reorganize everything in accordance with their own ideological fantasies (there have been at least two separate proposals directly involving my campus floated in the last eighteen months that I’m aware of) but at least the jackets are nice and that has to count for something.