Postscript: Reflections on my car wash dress and the fine tradition of friendly teasing

By Carrie Classon | Contributor | February 2025

The car wash dress
My sister took me to task.

“You know I was not being mean about your dress, don’t you?”

She meant the dress that she had said made me look like a car wash – the part of the car wash where the flappy things slap the car dry. My dress looked a lot like that, especially if I spun around. I thought this was hilarious and mentioned it in a column.

“Of course I knew you weren’t being mean!” I told her.

It was not my intention to be so amusing, wearing the car wash dress. From a certain angle, it looks pretty stylish. It was some designer’s idea of a good look, and because I wear a smaller size, I can usually fit into these ill-conceived but affordable cast-offs I find on the internet. Not all of them work out. But I’m delighted when I can cause some unexpected merriment simply by showing up in an $11 used dress.

My sister ought to know. She should know that, at 62, I’m not angling for some best-dressed list. I’m all about having fun with clothes, trying weird and different things, and a lot of those things absolutely are not going to work out. That’s fine with me. I still have the car wash dress. It’s black, so I could wear it to a funeral sometime when I felt a little levity might be welcomed at the end of the service.

My family has a fine tradition of teasing. I know some people find this hard to believe, and I know some people tease cruelly. That’s not what I mean at all. The teasing in my family has always been delivered with a heavy dose of love. Since I was a small child, I’ve known that the person who got teased was loved and the more people teased, the more love there was.

My dad and his sister were terrible to each other. My father always gave my aunt the meanest birthday cards, until one year she said, “Just once, I’d like a nice birthday card.”

The next year, my father went on a mission to find the most maudlin, absurdly sentimental, “To My Beloved Sister” birthday cards he could find. He found three, doused them in perfume, and presented them to her. (My dad also made her a rather nice set of candleholders in his woodshop that year, as I recall.)

They both laughed so hard they had to wipe away tears. She never asked for another nice card. So when my sister tells me I look like a car wash, it makes my day. I feel seen. I feel loved.

Being able to tell someone they look like a car wash means you know them well. She knows I have an oversized interest in buying dresses – too many dresses – for cheap on the internet. She knows I’m not terribly self-conscious. (OK, I’m a bit of a ham.) Most of all, she knows that I know she loves me. She has supported me through every crazy and life-disturbing decision and event – career changes, a divorce, and moves across the country. There has never been a moment of my life when I have doubted that my sister would be there for me.
So, she gets to tease me.

I am definitely keeping the car wash dress. And it’s not the last crazy dress I will buy. I figure it’s my duty to give my sister something new to laugh about.

Till next time.

Postscript: Reflections on circling friendships and my 100-year-old grandmother (March 2025)
Postscript: Reflections on levitating cats, learned helplessness, and 10 years of marriage (April 2025)
More Postscript coming soon!

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