I can't move

On Friday I went to my own personal slice of heaven: a shopping mall with an Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, and Target. bring on the 5.99 t-shirts! The only downside, I was going through severe dehydration when I went. (I had woken up that morning at the unnatural hour of 6:30 to meet a friend for a hike. I thought the email said 2 1/2 miles; it said 2 1/2 hours. Uphill.)

So I'm at Old Navy in bit of a daze looking for lightweight travel clothes for my trip to Roma. I picked up a black cotton dress that looked like it could be a good bathing suit cover-up type thing and added it to the mass of other clothes I took into the dressing room. Now, I have a bad habit of not checking dresses for side zips. I typically pull the thing over my head, smear deodorant down the side and then, when my arm gets stuck, I find the side zipper. So when I was in the dressing room with one arm stuck straight up and another pinned to my side in this black dress, I just thought I would go find the side zipper. What I found instead was the tag on the dress, which, contrary to the 'S' on the hanger, said the dress was for girls age 6-7.

How embarrassing. But not a problem. I got the thing over my shoulders, surely I can just pull it back off.

Insert panic attack right about now. The dress is stuck. My arms are stuck. My chest is bright red from trying to yank the thing up. Okay, fine. Up is not an option. Let's go for down.

So I have these things called 'hips' which 6 year old girls tend not to have. So now my entire midsection is bright red and I have this damn dress (covered in deodorant) trapped around my waist. (As a side note, if you ever want to blow any self esteem ou have about your body in an dressing room, get trapped in a too small dress. you will see your once lean and tone figure in whole new (and devastating) light).

The question I ask myself now is whether it would be better to rip the dress to shreds and just pay for it or waddle out of the dressing room to give the bored employee the highlight of her day. I opt for private mortification and begin tugging at the dress. I can actually hear seams ripping. Fortunately, it's ON and the dress is from the children's department so it costs all of 10 bucks. But then I start picturing myself at the check-out with a torn dress covered in deodorant trying to explain what exactly just happened. So I start to pull more slowly.

At this point I have decided that down is so not an option and return to the upward movement. I think all my pulling down (and loosening some seams) gave the dress just enough give to allow me to essentially dislocate one shoulder and pull it out from the dress. Once that was done I had enough space for the next arm.

And, voila, I am freed of the beast.

And now my secret confession: I put the dress back on its hanger (which I now notice is very small and plastic, quite unlike all my other hangers, almost as though it was designated for a CHILDREN'S section) and hand it back to the girl working the dressing room with all the other clothes I didn't want. The dress now looks like some kind of dead animal, limp and mangled, barely staying on the hanger. And I feel a little triumphant. My heart is beating and my adrenalin is rushing as though I had just encountered some black bear in the woods (and hidden up a tree until it sauntered away).

So the moral of my story: as women's fashion becomes 'younger' and children's fashion becomes 'older', always check your labels. Or learn how to pop your arm out of its socket. Either way.