my dry cleaner loves me

This morning I took some time to evaluate my job/ role as a wife.

You know, how I think I'm doing.

This isn't something I do on a regular basis.

Actually, I don't know if I've ever thought about it much.

Maybe never.

But three little words spoken to me this morning made me stop and think.

I'm sure you'll never guess what those words were.

It all started when I walked into the dry cleaners and the man working there said

"Hello, Mrs. Smith." (name changed for safety)

I stopped in my tracks and these were my thoughts...

He knows my name? Already?

We haven't been coming here that long!

The Hubby is the one that usually drops off and picks up his cleaning.

We must come here WAY too often!

He must think I'm a really bad wife, not doing my husbands laundry.

That's how the whole "let's re-evaluate your wifely duties" conversation in my head started.

I spent the drive home thinking about it.

I'd like to plead my case.

The Hubby and I had only been married a year or two and we were having the same fight over and over.

It was our "tube-of-toothpaste-fight".

You know how people tease newly married couples about fighting over squeezing the tube of toothpaste different ways.

I never really understood that.

Just buy two tubes for goodness sakes! Geez! (which we always have. I squeeze from the middle and Hubby neatly from the end... silly, I know).

So anyhoo, our "tube-of-toothpaste-fight" centered around laundry.

Specifically, me not doing it "right".

Week after week he pointed out this mistake of not hanging a certain shirt straight or that mistake of over drying a special pair of pants.

It was bad. Okay, I'll admit this was much bigger than some tube-of-toothpaste-fight.

Finally, one day I snapped.

"I'm done!" I announced. "From now on, you can do your own laundry."

And for almost twenty years I've held my ground.

As he has gotten busier with work over the years, more and more of his clothes go to the dry cleaners.

And I never really thought about it.

Until today.

That whole drive home I asked myself

"should you give in and do his laundry again?"

"are you a bad wife?"

"the fighting will start again. is it worth it?"

I decided I would bring it up with The Hubby when I got home.

If he thinks it's crazy the guy already knows me by name then maybe I'll start doing his laundry again.

You know, kinda like a "laundry sign".

He was in the shower when I got home.

"Honey?" I yelled over the noise of the water "You want to hear something crazy?"

and I told him.

"Oh, that's nothing! He knew my name by the second week. And you know what's really crazy? He has also known the last 4 digits of our phone number just as long!"

Whew! Turns out the laundry guy is just one of those freaky people that can remember people and numbers well (I like to call them freaky people only because I'm extremely jealous).

But there's something else that makes me wonder.

Just before we moved away from Kalamazoo I received a gift from the little old lady at the dry cleaners.

A very nice pair of hand made slippers (that Tony has stolen and won't give back to me)

I figured they gave them out to everyone.

Now I'm not so sure.