The Coat

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a coat that doesn't fit her anymore.  It's a funny thing about being a small grown-up; I still get hand-me-downs.  My friend was emotionally attached to this coat, and sad to be giving it away.  She didn't want to simply donate it to charity.  She wanted to give it to a Good Home.  I accepted the responsibility.

The coat looks a lot like this:

However, for reasons unknown, it has no buttons.  It has button holes, but nothing to put in them, nor any sign that it ever had buttons attached.

The first thing I did was take it to be dry cleaned.  (And to have the shoulder pads removed, because I have relatively broad shoulders already so the shoulder pads were total overkill.  It made me think of a quote from What Not to Wear, when Stacey said something like "Foxy lady?  More like boxy lady."  Anyway...)

When I went to pick the coat up, the lady behind the counter gave me a funny look.  I didn't understand why, until she started apologizing for the fact that the dry-cleaning facility had unaccountably lost all the buttons off my coat.  She told me that she was going to call the facility tomorrow about the problem, and offered to fix it for me, clearly trying to defend herself from my fearsome customer's temper, when I started to laugh.  

I explained the situation: that the coat had no buttons to begin with.  She was visibly relieved.  I told her I was sorry for not pointing out the state of the coat when I dropped it off.  I think it nearly gave her a heart attack.  She explained to me in broken English how astonished and confused she was when she realized that the coat had come back to her buttonless.

"Why?"  She asked me pleadingly, gesturing towards the coat, "Why no buttons?  How lose buttons?"

Good grief.

This coat has become quite the drama magnet.  In my determination to successfully rehabilitate it, I went shopping online for buttons, and ordered a style that I thought would be just right.  Six little buttons, for a grand total of $3.19 CAD, before shipping.  I figured they'd show up in my mailbox in a couple of weeks.

Well, it couldn't be that simple.  Firstly, the button vendor sent me e-mail updates at every stage of the process.  My order was received!  My payment was received!  The buttons are packed!  The buttons are shipped!  I have never received so many status updates for any online purchase.  Still, they seemed to take an awfully long time to get here.  I wasn't sure why, because most things ship to Toronto from just over the American border.

Finally, on November 10th, I received a notice that Canada Post had tried to deliver a package but I wasn't at home.  I had to go pick it up at the post office.  The little sticky note they left me said it would be available "Tomorrow after 13:00 h".  Fine.  No problem.  I stopped into the postal outlet on the way home.  But it was closed.  Whu...  Huh?  Why?  It's open later than that, isn't it?  On weekdays?

Except that it was November 11th.  Remembrance Day.  Right.

So the next day I went back, and showed my official government-issued photo I.D. and signed my signature on the dotted line in order to take possession of this precious little envelope of buttons.  Which could easily have fit into my mailbox.  Silliest shipping overkill ever!  At least I found out why they had taken so long to get to me.  The envelope was postmarked "Hong Kong".

The coat has gone back to the nice Asian lady to have the buttons attached.  I have every confidence that it will come out looking great.  (After all this, it had better.)