Stuck on You

Imagine:

You're in a clothing shop. You see a pretty dress.

You pull it off the rack.

You lock yourself inside a dressing room to try it on.

You slip it over your head.

You try to pull it off.

And it gets STUCK.

Ten points to anyone who can guess what happened to me in David Jones today...


OK. So I wander in on my lunch break looking to browse, and I see this cute little dress rimmed in baby blue. Normally, I'm a Size 8 or sometimes a Size 10. Personally, I believe that if we went by the sizings that were in vogue seven years ago, I should be a Size 10. Except this whole stupid 'vanity sizing' concept means that sizes have all gone down...so that women are meant to think, "Oooh yay, I'm a Size 8, I feel better about myself so I'll buy this!"

It doesn't work. Dressing room mirrors are cruel.

Anyhow...I somehow managed to pull this dress over my head, except I had this funny sensation in my left arm.

It felt like I'd dislocated my shoulder. But I ignored the pain.

I then realised that this Size 8 dress would, in normal circumstances, qualify as a SIZE SIX. IT WAS NOT A NORMAL SIZE EIGHT. It's a simple test: I can breathe in Size 8 clothes. The same cannot be said for Size Six items.

So I tried to get it off.

Except it was stuck. Stuck fast. Stuck stuck stuck.

Stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Okay...okay...don't panic.

Tug.

Tug.

AAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH.

Breathe. Breathe.

It would not budge. I decided that the best way to get it off would be to try slipping an arm and shoulder through..then the rest would follow. However, this was easier said than done.

I sincerely hope that nobody outside was watching, as they would have seen a pair of hapless arms flailing about in terror above the changing room door.

As luck would have it, my shoulder and arm got nicely stuck. There was not one millimetre of room. I could see the circulation being cut off to my left arm- it was swelling up nicely like an angry scarlet Bratwurst- and I was beginning to feel a sense of overwhelming panic.

There was actually a point where I considered just getting a staff member to cut me out and I'd pay for the dress- it was $70- but the horror and indignity of this was just too much to bear. So I struggled in pained silence. My shoulder hurt, my arm hurt, and my fingers were beginning to go numb.

This is it, I thought. I'm going to be stuck in this dressing room until closing time and I'll miss the rest of my shift...

That thought alone made me fight even more vigorously. The Changing Room Gods must have been looking out for me today...perhaps they thought that I had struggled enough...and so somehow, miraculously, I managed to to drag it off.

I could have cried from joy.

Except my shoulder HURT.

I dumped the dress back on the counter, grabbed a bite to eat and ran back to work. Except I was still extremely stressed from my ordeal- I shudder to think about what would have happened had I not been able to extricate myself from that prison of patterned fabric- and it's quite difficult to greet people with a smile when your neck and shoulder are still an aching reminder of this.

Colleague: Hey, are you OK?
Me: What? Yes. Fine! Why?!
Colleague: You look...kind of angry.
Me: I'M NOT ANGRY.
Colleague: Oh good...cos I thought you were mad at me or something.
Me: What?! No, of course I'm not mad at you (at this point I was thinking extremely uncharitable thoughts towards THAT dress)

So...'fess up.

Have you ever gotten stuck?!