Back in January, having seen ads in my Instagram feed for a while, I caved in and ordered one of these totally sweet (okay, totally tacky) jackets in gray:
<a href="https://icecoldlmnd.com/products/kodak-light-windbreaker" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2019/04/b801d-jacket-gray-xs-kodak-light-windbreaker-ice-cold-lmnd-streetwear-6115500916779_1080x.jpg" alt="" /></a>
"Ice Cold Lemonade", it turns out, is probably some shell company reselling cheap goods from China at a profitable markup. No big deal, I guess. I didn't pay much for this jacket at the time. I got my tracking number and waited a few weeks for the jacket to make its way through China's postal service and into the USA.
When the USPS tracking system told me it was delivered to my front door, I was pretty upset to discover that it wasn't actually there. I don't have a history of package theft in my neighborhood, but in recent months, I’ve had some occasionally crummy mail delivery service. Judging by the number of mail pieces delivered to my house for an address with a similar number or one block over with the same number, I assumed the same may have happened with my package. The best USPS could do was to "open up a case", which was effectively a dead end. By late February I’d written it off as a loss.
But I still occasionally saw marketing emails from the seller advertising the jacket, and I still really liked it. So this past week I did the unthinkable—something I never do—and bought it a second time. Order confirmed on Thursday, tracking number from China's mail system on Friday morning. I even remarked to a coworker on Friday about how unlike me it was to repurchase a lost item.
SO OF COURSE I get home on Friday to find that, nearly four months after the original order (and the day the new order has already shipped and can therefore no longer be cancelled), a weathered package from China has been left on one of my porch chairs. This thing looked like it had sat on an unknown neighbor's porch the entire time it was missing, but the contents inside were unsullied. So yeah, I felt pretty stupid right away, but I was also excited to finally receive the original order.
I tore open the package and things got weird before hitting me squarely with the stupid stick once more. I'm a big dude, so I ordered this jacked in the largest available size: 3XL. A puffy-cut windbreaker-style jacket of that size should have been just fine. Why, then, did the tag inside this garment say 5XL? I wrote it off as a difference in sizing between countries. I tried it on, and I'll tell you that this jacket may not have fit me when I was wearing XL garments in my youth.
I felt bad enough when the missing package showed up the very day my replacement order shipped. I felt extra stupid when I realized the redundant jacket won't even fit me when it gets here.
This whole experience has been deeply humiliating, but I figure I might as well share the story publicly so that I can move past it. I think I'll eventually laugh about it; not so much the wasted money and poor decision making as the crazy timing—the when and how I discovered my folly.