So I joked when I returned home from the dry cleaner that I had given our laundry to a complete stranger. Which, in essence, I did. All I had was a small purple piece of paper that had a 17 written on it, and crossed off, and a 5 written below that. THAT was my claim ticket? Yeesh. So, when it was a little past 5 the next day, I had my mom walk up the hill with me to the dry cleaner. It was about a 20 minute walk up, with mom asking every stop light, "is that it?" pointing off into the distance. Finally, we arrived at the small shop, and I smiled widely and presented my "receipt" (the purple paper with the 5 on it). The woman, same as the day before, looked at it, was confused for a second, and then said, "Ahhhhhhhhhh. American." She proudly removed our stack of folded laundry from the shelf and put it into a bag for us. It was heavy and not as easy had I brought my own bag with, but they smelled like fresh cut flowers, so I was pleased. No more 30 hours in the same clothes-sitting in a dirty plane seat- walking through the streets of Zurich- not changing before going to bed smell that they had possessed before. I returned the smile and we were on our way.
It wasn't until later that night, after I had done some reading and some computing that I decided to sort out the clothes. I torpedoed dads pairs of socks at him one by one, and gave him back his "warm" shirt (I would argue any shirt when layered three times can be warm) and went to give my mom back her pants. I went to give her back.... wait.... where.... what? There were no black pants to be found. What the? How was it possible that we did not get ONE item out of my big load of clothes back? And why did it have to belong to my mom? ARGH! Why couldn't it have been something of mine? By this point, it was too late to go back. Dangit. Dangit. Dangit. Friends don't let friends give their laundry to strangers. #fail.
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