I remember the green coat in my fifth and sixth grades.
When I needed a new jacket, my mother asked what kind I wanted. I described something like what bikers wear. She listened carefully. I thought she understood for sure the kind I wanted.
The next day when I got home from school, I discovered, on my bed, a jacket which was not what I had expected. I went close to the jacket slowly, as if it were a stranger.
From the kitchen Mother shouted that my jacket was in the closet. I rushed and pulled at the clothes in the closet, hoping the jacket on the bed wasn't for me but my brother. No luck. I wanted to cry because it was so ugly and so big. But I knew I'd have to wear it for a long time before I'd have a new one. I looked at the jacket, like an enemy, thinking bad things before I took off my old and small jacket.
I put the big jacket on. I stood in front of the mirror(镜子)，turning right and left. I looked ugly.
I threw it on my brother's bed and looked at it for a long time before I put it on and went out, smiling a "thank you" to my mom.
The next day I wore it to school. At the morning break, my best friend, Steve, looked at me for a long time. The girls turned away to whisper. The teachers talked about how foolish I looked in my new jacket. When it was time for the whole school to get together on the playground, _______. Although they didn't say out aloud, "Man, that's ugly," I heard their talk and even laughter.
And so I went, in my jacket. So embarrassed，so hurt, I couldn't even do my lessons the rest of the day. I received Cs on tests.
I wore that thing for three years. All in those years no love came to me.
I blamed(指责) that jacket for those bad years. I blamed my mother for her bad taste and her cheap ways. It was a sad time for the heart. Anyway, I spent my sixth-grade year, looking forward to something good to happen to me.
And it was about that time I began to grow, still in that green jacket, which had become my brother who went along wherever I went.
