Poor Pinkus, poor little Pinkus.

On Tuesday, I ran some errands with my mother in law. I took her clothes into the dry cleaner for her. I had to give her phone number so the dry cleaner could look up the account and after he found it he said, "Hi, Carol." I said hi back without correcting the name.

I immediately remembered going to the dry cleaner for my dad when I was young.

We had to go the the cleaners every Saturday. We drove 6.22 miles every Saturday morning to my dad's favorite cleaners, Adams Laundry and Cleaners. There was a perfectly good One Hour Martinizing about 5 blocks from my house and why we never used it, I'll never know.

I always put the laundry under my dad's name, Blair Ballard. Pretty soon, one of the guys that worked there started calling me "Blair." He thought I was Blair Ballard. I could have been. Blair is a gender neutral name. And I was too embarrassed and silly to correct him. So I was Blair Ballard to the Adams Laundry and Cleaners for several years.

One time, one of my dad's friends went to pick up my dad's laundry. He gave the name "Blair Ballard" and the guy working there wanted to know how SHE was doing. My dad's friend blew my cover and told him that I was Blair's daughter named, Jennifer. The next time I went to the cleaners and every time after, the guy always said (with great enthusiasm), "Hi, JENNIFER!" Made me feel so stupid.

I wonder how long it will take OK-Cleaners to figure out that I'm Jennifer and not Carol.