Dryclean my Mind

I went to pick up my dry cleaning the other day and as I was standing at the counter, I became lost in thought staring at my bag of clothes. When the lady rang me up I handed her my card,
signed the receipt, and headed on my way out the door. But she stopped me . . .

“Sir, don’t forget your clothes”. They were still hanging on the rack.

Enter: waves of self-chastisement & loathing for not being “in the moment”. Exactly how out of the moment do you have to be to forget your drycleaning at the drycleaners?? It’s not like I went in there for anything else. So as the little Yoda on my shoulder is yammering away ---“never your mind on where you are on what you are doing . . . reckless, you are”---I go grab my clothes and start to walk out the door again when something hits me mid stride. “That happened the last time I came here” I say out loud. Enter: equal parts frustration & amusement. I felt like a mouse in a maze, always bumping up against the same wall. And I wondered "does this silly game go on forever?"

And then the drycleaning lady said “everybody does it---all the time. I’ve chased after people and they've completely dissapeared around the corner. Then they come back a few hours later saying ‘uuummmmm, excuse me, could I please have my coat?' I guess people just like to pay me for nothing.”

At that we both smiled and all the frustration just drained out of me. Because it’s somehow comforting to know that so many of us are in this boat together. Running here and there, doing 12 different things, thinking 25 others, all while trying to get through our day.

And so there's a certain comfort in numbers---even in our shared absent-mindedness. Not to mention that it's funny as hell to imagine a steady trickle of people walking into a drycleaners, paying for nothing and walking out.