WE DING DRESSES

Once, I was driving by a store window and that is what it said. I was about seven years old, and in my head I imagined that all those big women's dresses I'd seen on TV and at family events -- proms, wedding dresses, Civil War-era dresses, etc. -- were actually made out of metal, and did, in fact, not just look like bells, but actually were bells. And of course, since they were bells, they didn't get washed, or dry cleaned; they got "dinged," which would knock all the dirt and soot and crap off of them.

I forgot about it a few seconds later, not realizing that, for many years, deep in the soup of my brain ladle, the belief was with me that women actually wore hundred-pound metal dresses to formal events, and that was obviously why they were always crying at weddings.

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