The Girl Who People Recommend

What I Wore

In my high school history class the teacher tried to explain to us the impact of JFK’s death. To a bunch of students, preoccupied with acne and concerned with the passing of notes in between classes, it was hard to imagine the nation being shaken to its core by a single event. Our teacher told us to go home that night and ask our parents where they were, what they were doing, and what they were wearing the day JFK was assassinated. My mom, to my astonishment, had precise answers to each question.

When the second plane hit the world trade center, I looked down and made a mental note: Dirty couch in theater class. Pink and orange striped t-shirt.

Vintage

Aly and I are looking for a very specific dress. It was red and white polka dot with a scoop neck and thick straps. The problem is that it didn’t exist. We had searched every thrift store and vintage shop in the city- except one. It’s this great store we’ve gone too a couple times and has come to take almost a legendary spot in our minds, right alongside that certain Salvation Army off Clybourn.

So we pull up to the vintage store and there’s a couple standing outside. They’re waiting for it to open. What kind of store doesn’t open until two in the afternoon? Well this one, apparently. Problem is it’s well past two. We all quickly realize the second sign displaying the store hours, which is posted a mere five inches under the first sign displaying the store hours, reads that the it doesn’t open until three. Aly and I quickly decide to go eat Thai food and come back later.

Our bellies full of crazy noodles, we arrive back at the shop right at three o’clock. The owner still hasn’t arrived. Now there’s the same couple plus a really old man waiting outside the shop. Aly and I decide to run across the street, pet a couple puppies, and return to the shop ten minutes later.

Still no sign of the lady who owned the place. After sitting in her car for a while with the windows down and our feet dangling out, Aly and I decided our wait wasn’t worth it and left.

Four days later, during which we still hadn’t found a dress in the entire city that resembled the one we so desired, we returned to the store right at three, understating the discrepancy in store hours, giving the owner a break, and making excuses for her like “maybe she had a late night and just slept in accidentally” or “maybe she got into a terrible car crash or something”….

But when we pulled up, the store wasn’t open. Aly was baffled. I declared I was going to throw a brick through the window. But only jokingly. Instead, I went up, cupped my hands into the window and stared deep into the store.

“This sucks” Aly said as I returned to the car. I agreed. I was pissed. I decided to write the owner a letter. “That’ll show her,” I thought.

Many minutes later, as I’m still scrawling violently on a torn out sheet of paper, Aly huffed and begged me to hurry up and finish it already. And just then, as I’m dotting the final sentence with a very furious period, Aly gasped as the owner walked up and unlocked the front door. “Let me read that” she said and put her hand out for my note. I handed it over. As she scanned it quickly she declared “ok, let’s go give her a piece of our mind.”

We were in before the owner lady could flip the sign from closed to open. But she wasn’t even taken aback by us, two girls in skirts, rushing in with the determination of a hurricane.  A few moments following our arrival, she managed to sigh out a pitiful ‘hello’.

We flipped through the racks quickly, pulling our red things, pulling out polka dotted things, but finding nothing that fit our requirements. We were so very certain the perfect dress was going to be inside that vintage shop. We were betting on it. We were out of time, and had she been open four days previous, we could have resorted to another plan. But now we were screwed.

By this point, the owner had shuffled behind the counter and pushed play on her answering machine. Each memo bellowed out a frantic caller into the hallow empty store with half the lights still off as she stared into the blackness at the back of the shop, not hearing or comprehending a single message. Finally, as we were about to leave, she asked “can I help you find anything?”

Aly and I, once so determined to tell her off, once so set on making her realize what a terrible and unthoughtful nuisance she had made in our lives, stopped, and were merely able to putter out: “a red and white polka dotted dress, please.”

She combed the racks, shrugging out all the clothes we had looked at already. She seemed stooped and sad.

“There haven’t been many red dresses around this summer” she exhaled breathlessly.

“Ok. Thanks so much” we said, with a much more consoling tone than an irate one, and scuffled quietly out of the store.

I think we both realized sometimes in life there are much worse things happening in the world than the inconvenience of a vintage store being closed.

Down the Drain

Today I dropped my keys in the sewer. This is particularly ironic because my buddy, who was staying at my place two weeks earlier, left me a message one day in a panic after dropping my house keys in the sewer. However, her experience tipped me off to a soluation. I immediately called the people who came to her rescue- my next street over neighbors. Apparently one of them managed to pull the cover off the manhole and dig the keys out.

‘If he can do it, I can do it,” I figured. So, after rolling my pants up and putting my galoshes on, I marched down the stairs and proceeded to lace my fingers through the metal grate.

Fuck yes, I did it. I did it all by myself.

The problem wasn’t removing the manhole lid, it was getting the keys out of the slimy, gooey heap of muddy leaves piled at the base. Jumping in wasn’t an option. I was a little worried the world would pull a ‘Goonie’s’ on me and I would end up jumping into a booby trap of a bottomless pit.

I tried a cane, an old man’s cane, but it was too thick to slip through the keychain. Then I tried an umbrella, but it wasn’t long enough to latch the keys. Then, as I was about to ducktape two hangers to the end of an old plastic pirate sword, I saw it; A tall, thin metal rod with a hook on it at the back of my closet.

Sometimes life just gives you what you need.