Oh You Dirty Girl

My husband likes to call me “Messy Marvin.” Some of you might remember years ago, “Messy Marvin” was the name given to a child who got stuff all over his clothes in a laundry detergent commercial (I can’t remember which brand, which would be to the dismay of the company, no doubt). You see, I have a track record of spilling things on myself.

The probability of my dropping something on my outfit is directly proportional to the amount of money I spent on the outfit. So, needless to say, I don’t go in for very expensive clothing. And yet, I still manage to get the clothes I do buy dirty.

I don’t just get them dirty, I succeed in staining them with chocolate ice cream or spaghetti sauce or some other nearly impossible to remove ingredient, not on the periodic table of elements. In reality, I should probably dress all in white, on the theory that I could just bleach out whatever life (or I) threw at me, literally. However, I must be the only person on the planet to fail at bleaching. Somehow, when I use bleach, I will manage to ruin the outfit I have on, while trying to rescue the outfit from yesterday that ended up with teriyaki sauce on it (after it had enrobed the chicken, of course). I do this by splattering the stuff while applying it.

Even if I manage not to get my current outfit covered in bleach, I somehow fail to get the garment I am working on clean. Either the bleach doesn’t penetrate, or it works too well and the whole thing ends up a yellowish color that looks like an item of vintage clothing. When I say vintage clothing though, don’t think ebay, think oldlay, as in old lady!

I really don’t know what the solution is. I could try dressing all in black, but then I imagine that I would find some whitish substance, having the characteristics of crazy glue, to spill on myself. Plus, I don’t think I look good in black, so why be practical?

As I mentioned earlier, the more expensive the outfit, the more likely that I will get it dirty, and this definitely extends to evening wear. Let me give you a concrete (or should I say chocolate?) example of my messy laundry problem. Last year I attended a fundraiser in London where there were various yummy gourmet food stations. For my friend Mary Jane and I, the highlight of the evening was the chocolate fondue station.
I knew before I approached the fondue that I was undertaking a very risky endeavor given my history of being a food klutz and the fact that I was wearing a very expensive, and brand new L.K. Bennett dress. So, I decided I would be extra careful. I grabbed an extra napkin and made sure it was safely underneath whatever I was eating as I leaned over the fondue fountain and overindulged. I came away from the table sated and proud. I was proud that my extra napkin and extra caution had succeeded, or so I thought, in keeping my outfit clean. As we walked away, I looked down and discovered to my horror, that though I had managed to keep the bodice of my gown clean, I had somehow managed to lean into chocolate from the waist down. How the chocolate got that far down, I don’t know. Someone must have spilled chocolate down the table cloth and I hadn’t noticed. That someone must have been a pretty messy eater. I swear it wasn’t me.