Winter reflection

The denim jacket reeked of stale sweaty feet as I removed it along with my other clothes from the county jail rubber storage bin. The denim jacket was just a plain old jacket lined with plaid wool that had belonged to my step grandfather, a cattlemen. It had no punk rock patches or buttons, no painted on anarchy signs. Just plain denim; my best try at squaring up. Once I walked outside, I inhaled a welcome breath of the below freezing winter air as I walked into the Sunday sunset and walked 4 miles across town to my court appointed drug and alcohol group therapy class. 86 hours of court appointed, pay out your ass by the hour therapy. 86 was the maximum they could sentence. Reckon rolling my old 79 chevy van within city limits while trying to drift corners at 50mph was not such a cool stunt. (And yet here I am bragging about it. Again.) I remember the counselor was a psychology Doctor and sometimes his topics of discussion interested me. He once looked across the circle of people and asked me if I thought tattoos were for losers who had low self esteem. He also once proclaimed that insanity was defined by a person who repeated actions expecting a different outcome. Yup, I'm not sharpest peanut in the turd but I heard him loud and clear. I'm now much more covered with tattoos.  After the class got out I would sit in a dark ally waiting for my mom to pick me up, sometimes for over an hour or two and sometimes it was below freezing. We lived on a country ranch 30 miles away. The drive home usually involved conversation about me and I always thought it a shitty way to end a weekend. I'd go back to work Monday morning, all week, and after I clocked out Friday evening I would walk myself over to the county bed and breakfast and check myself in for another weekend of reading books and trying to sleep behind bars while hearing strange noises. I did this for 12 weekends in a row in the winter of 2004. I remember knowing that I was somehow fortunate. I did after all have a job turning wrenches at the local Honda shop during the week to pay my bail. Most of the people I was around had no such job and I thought it was a promise of a brighter future. After I got though my legal shit I bought a $600 four door BMW 317i with half a million miles on it's clock and put my dirt bike in the back seat and I went racing. And I never quit. And I wear the occasional denim with anarchy signs and obscene patches on it.