In honor of Halloween, I must RETELL the story of the Haunted Dress
(Make sure to keep the lights on)
Sure I was smiling, but behind that smile was TERROR. Bwahahaha!
When I bought this beautiful blue-gray satin dress it had a small stain at the neckline, so I took it to the cleaners. I removed the four rhinestone buttons on the sleeves so they would not be damaged in cleaning. The dress came back without stain. I bought perfectly matching thread to sew the buttons back on, then hung the dress up on a rack below an open staircase. A month later, while going up the stairs, I tripped and spilled my dinner a bit. Some salsa splashed on this dress. Very frustrated, I took the dress to be cleaned again, removing the buttons again. It came back perfectly clean; I sewed on the buttons.
Then, a month later, I went to sell the dress, and there was a stain at the neckline again, and I have not a clue as to how it got there. Extremely frustrated, I removed the buttons again. I waited about six months to take the dress to the cleaners again (being slightly freaked out by this) and it came back perfectly clean again. Then I went to sew the buttons back on and could only find three of the four. I searched high and low.
Finally, after several months, the fourth button turned up in an unlikely spot. I was preparing to sew the buttons on, but the perfectly matched thread was nowhere to be found. I found a pretty similar gray-ish thread and stitched the buttons on, but noticed that one of the rhinestones had fallen out that was previously in place.
I photographed the dress, and by now I was a bit on edge about this series of mishaps. I was excruciatingly careful with it every step of the way. Then when I uploaded the photos from my camera, the computer crashed, something that positively never happens. When I restarted, the photos were gone (again, this never happens!) so I took more, with even more excruciating care.
The dress sold, and I boxed it up. By now, I was talking to it soothingly, like, “it’s OK, you are going to a good home, and you’ll like it there.” I thought I was done with problems, but when I got to the post office, my delivery confirmation sticker would not scan! (I'm not making any of this up!) The postal worker put on a new sticker.
The woman who bought the dress truly loved it, and I hope the dress loved her too and didn’t give her too much trouble!