The Dress

My wife and daughter often share clothing. This process has become a little more difficult now that our daughter lives in NYC while we reside in New Jersey. But, as I learned today, where this is a will there is, even if it borders on the bizarre, always a way.

 

This morning my wife and daughter were chatting. We were coming in to the city early this afternoon, and we would bring in anything our daughter needed. She was attending a wedding in the evening, and the discussion turned to a dress that my daughter asked to borrow.

 

But the logistics were going to be hard to orchestrate. We were to be in midtown, while our daughter was downtown. Our window was tight, as was hers. How was the dress to get from our hands to hers?

 

Several options were considered: dropping the dress at a friend's, having our daughter subway up to meet us. Timing was, at best imperfect. Then a solution appeared, compliments of our daughter's fiancee, and the realities of NYC in 2017. The dress would travel by Uber to its ultimate destination.

 

And so, as we got to our car, we called our daughter who announced that the dress would be picked up in 4 minutes. However it was not being transported by car, but rather by bicycle. And, oh by the way, the bike rider was deaf.

 

Our daughter had studied sign language as a child and was able to give my wife a quick tutorial on the proper greeting. A minute later, the bike (which our daughter had been tracking) appeared, and my wife flagged it down. She signed her version of a greeting, confirmed the address for delivery, and within seconds the dress was headed downtown, being carried in one hand by a well meaning gentleman on a bicycle.

 

We were advised that the package would be delivered three miles away in 26 minutes, and in 26 minutes it found its new home.

 

And thus, one dress made a strange and wonderful journey across the Hudson and into our daughter's waiting arms. As I write this, the dress and our daughter are now attending a wedding somewhere in the city. Soon this article of clothing will be returned to the closet from whence it came, but its path back is likely to be far simpler, if far less entertaining.