Thursday, October 23, 2008

Hold the Starch and Just Find My Goddamned Clothes!


I once spent $300 on a sweater during my salad days -  actually I did this a lot in my salad days. It was the late 90's, I was still in my 20's and things were looking up so why not? It was certainly a different state of mind than the current "I'm pushing 40 and the sky is falling".

I always know the economy must be bad when even
I stop shopping and start pretending I'm not more than in love with a fuchsia with navy hearts Marc Jacobs top I spied recently at Nordstrom. To quote bean-pole-raisin-face-stylist Rachel Zoe, "I die" whenever I see it. Oh and a Hanii Y plaid three-quarter length sleeve plaid peacoat. " I Die" and "I Die" many more times.

I used my trusty dry cleaners to take good care of my "babies" (as I called my favorite designer pieces). They knew me by name and I was confident they would keep the 'pilling' on my beloved black and neon green plaid Versace jacket to a minimum. One day, in a pinch for time I gave my dry cleaning to Daddy Warbucks to take to a dry cleaner near his office. D.W. had known the owners for years and said not to worry they do good work, he's known them forever etc.

A few weeks later I frantically tried to find one of my 300 babies in my closet with no luck. In a panic, I made D.W. go back and have them check two different times for my Ralph Lauren turquoise cashmere sweater that was so gorgeous it forgave any bad hair day. Needless to say D.W. was not too happy when the sweater eventually magically appeared in my closet.
Oops.

A few years later we moved to a new neighborhood and I chose a cleaners that was very close to our house. We had been in N.Y for a week of fun and being fabulous with our hip friends, Jade and Evan and I literally took all of my favorite pieces with me: shirts, tops dresses etc. - all my best things. When I dropped all of it off at the new cleaners I remember thinking, "It would really suck if something happened to these clothes." Jinx.

When I showed up to pick up my dry cleaning a week later, they told me they didn't have my clothes. I literally demanded that they go back and check at least 5 times. Meanwhile, the lady behind the counter and her uni-brow looked at me like I was insane when I started getting super pissed with tears streaming down my face. I wanted to say "Oh, you lost all my best clothes and a ton of them? Oh ok, see you next time, no starch please," but I got the feeling all sarcasm would be lost on uni-brow and her manager and manager's manager.  30 minutes later, still without my "babies", I called Daddy Warbucks in hysterics and told him to come to the dry cleaners, I mean the "fucktard cleaners", 
STAT I announced (as loudly as possible.)

D. W arrived and remained composed but intimidating which I found sexy through my Alice Cooper eyes and gasps of sobbing. D.W. told them he hoped they had insurance. "
Yeah insurance!" I screamed.  Then all (including D.W.) looked at me like I was homeless lady with schizophrenia.

As soon as we got back home, I thew myself on our bedroom oriental rug (I love that rug) and cried at the top of my lungs in the fetal position. D.W just looked at me shaking his head and said, "I'm sorry, did your entire family die in a horrific plane crash or did the dry cleaners lose some of your clothes?" This made me scream louder and cry harder. After about an hour of crying I was hungry so of course I picked myself up from the rug, grabbed an Advil, chips and a bottle of cold Grey Goose from the freezer.

Early the next morning the dry cleaners called D.W. and said they had given my clothes to someone else who had brought them back and that my house wasn't destroyed in a giant hurricane after all.  To not give him the pleasure of learning a lesson I just replied "Well it's just a good thing they weren't a size 6 and loved Nanette Lapore." 
-parker


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