Thoughtful Thursday-Falling Into Suburbia

I had a dress dry-cleaned last week. That may seem commonplace to most of you but for me, it marked some sort of decent into suburbia. Kind of like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
How terrifying.

I didn't intend on buying a dress that had to be dry-cleaned. I found it at Ross, actually. A Calvin Klein dress for $20--what a steal! The excitement must have short-circuited my brain from the common sense to check the washing label. When I got the dress home however, there it was--Dry Clean Only. Crap. Dry-cleaning is something that grown-ups do. Grown-ups with money that live in suburbia and drive BMWs. Right? Right? *sigh*

After I kicked myself repeatedly, I searched online for the tiny possibility that the dress could be washed by hand. Several sites said that hand-washing rayon/spandex was fine, while others said it would be disastrous. As much as I hated to spend extra money on dry-cleaning, it looked like hand-washing would be too risky. I loved the dress and it did fit perfectly...damn.

Off to the dry-cleaners I went, which was weird. And in weird situations I say ridiculous things.

The conversation went somewhat like this:

Me: "Hi! I bought this dress for $20. I usually check labels beforehand but it says to dry-clean only. What do you think?"
Counter Person: "We are a dry cleaners."
Me: "Um, right. I usually don't dry-clean stuff. Do you think it could be hand-washed...by any chance?"
Counter person: *Silence*
Me: "I'll just dry-clean it then. When can I pick it up?"
Counter Person: "6PM."
Me: "Wow, that's fast. Is everything done by machines or do you have to do it all by hand? Do you use chemicals?" *glancing at a row of suits* "They look like they're in body bags. Maybe the chemicals killed them. Haha."

Yeah, I don't think she was impressed either because the conversation kind of degraded from there.

Anyways, I picked up right at six. Didn't want to keep my dress waiting because that's just rude. $7.50, thank you very much. And it was wrapped in a body bag of its own. Somebody let it out because I don't think it can breathe in there.
When I came out of the gym that evening (don't get me started on how weird it is to belong to a gym and live in suburbia) I walked past several cars and noticed that they too, had clothing in body bags. It was like I joined some sort of freaky club. Gawd, shoot me now, I've fallen down the rabbit hole. Excuse me while I go mow my lawn and arrange my flamingos.

In the words of Alice from Lewis Carroll's, Alice in Wonderland:
“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Yes, indeed.