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A Delivered Memory


It was four years ago this month that we were packing our suitcase for Cabo San Lucas. Tom decided to indulge in a few new shirts and a light jacket for our trip, but when he came home from the mall, I wasn’t real thrilled with the style of the new jacket. “It looks like the kind of thing a delivery man would wear to work,” I lovingly exclaimed. “Don’t you want a tropical look?” He said that he liked it and he seemed very proud of his independent selection of new clothes. “Okay, but you look like you’re going to deliver a UPS package.”

Tom wore that jacket everywhere we toured in Cabo. It’s on all of our vacation pictures. Even after we returned home and went back to work, he wore his boring brown jacket. Then something funny happened when he went to the grocery store during lunch one afternoon. When he returned to the office he told me about the guy that approached him in the parking lot and asked him, “Is UPS hiring?” He never wore the jacket again.

Yesterday, Tom had to pitch his current much worn gray & black jacket. I started to suggest he stop at the mall when he is in town next weekend, and quipped “Don’t buy a UPS jacket though; maybe we should do this together!” We both laughed merrily, and we’re not even going on vacation.

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