my green coat hanger

I was on my way home from work on a warm winter’s day (today, in fact), and I had to kind of laugh at all the people on the train with me. I mean, they didn’t have 16 coat hangers. I did. I had four green ones, four white ones, and four tan ones. The lady across from me looked grumpy, and she glared at me as the rest of the commuters packed into our compartment, accusing me with her eyes of trying to establish the dreaded transit-eye contact.

Amber had asked me take the coat hangers out of the office, cause she thought they were cluttering things up. That was two months ago. Today I found them beside my desk where my chair needs to swivel if I feel like playing ‘Swivelling Fun’. So I thought to take them home.

Then Randy Travis came on the train and started singing “Angels Among Us”, and I was convinced the lady across from me was my angel- the angel among us meant solely for me. The angel that, if it was between me and you, like, if we were all about to fall off some cliff or something, and she could only save one of us, she’d so choose me, cause she’s my angel. You know, like when Celine Dion and that sexaholic R. Kelly sing “I’m Your Angel.” It’s like that, only this angel is my angel, and she’s only singing to me.

I think my angel thought I was a little weird. That’s okay, people usually think I’m a little strange at first. Turns out angels do, too. Also turns out angels don’t like it when you wink and smile and offer 16 coat hangers as a sacrifice to their God that you don’t really believe in, unless they prove it to you through magic and scantly clothed angel man friends, combined with that infamous angel “Hallelujah!” music. Ah well. Who needs a angel anyways.

I realized that somebody was probably hanging up their for-warm-days winter jacket with one of my green coat hangers the very minute I finished picking up my coat hangers from a clumsy drop outside my apartment building. I only had 15. Hey, maybe angels do like coat hangers as sacrifices. Maybe an angel's evil glare, in people body language, simply means, "I love you Roddy."

(I mean, we gotta be aware of the cultural differences between angels and people. Especially if we have different religious belief systems. Like, what if George Bush's angel is Jewish? Would he remember to wish his angel a happy Hannekah? And would he remember how to spell Hannekah?)