Beloved, this is a powerful statement: Everything Comes Out in the Wash! Everything comes out forgotten about or wiped off the slate clean. In good times, erased, not even a calamity that has to be forgotten in theory at least.

Possibly, even Miss Smith, your fourth grade school teacher who always looked at you with her eyeglasses on with a reflection on them that made you feel guilty and, besides, her eyes always had that look about them that you felt the brunt of.

It’s possible that, given other circumstances, you could have liked Miss Smith – or maybe not. You associated Miss Smith with winter. How cold could she have really been to fourth graders?

Besides, you didn’t yet know the existence of borders. When a teacher early on told your class to cross the street at the corner for safety, you had a friend who lived on a dead-end street and took it seriously. She ran up and down her street and crossed it at the dead-end faithfully until she figured it out.

You know, you never lived at a workhouse for the poor, yet you saw yourself wearing a dingy brown dirndl or whatever it may have been called at the time. You guessed words rather than to look them up. You lived your whole life through without using the dictionary to speak of.

You did have one teacher who let you freely ask your neighbor on either side of your desk how to spell a word. That was a great breakthrough in school. You did wonder, even then, what was spectacular about giving school children this simple freedom?

Now you remember how it was for your daughter in public school. This was before the days when reading programs watered down the vocabulary where they were no longer vocabulary words of the fourth grade range of advanced reading, God forbid. .

Your daughter finally pronounced the French first short syllable word obviously ling like llawnge-er-rie, a silk nightgown that French ladies would wear in their boudoir. At some point, your daughter would independently realize a short a, as in lingerie, which she had mentally pronounced as ling-a-rie along her way independently and shared the event of her word-captured world with her mother.

Words are so interesting.

Where do you put them all for safekeeping, and how long are you to keep it all there? Is there room enough to store all the more you accumulate later on? Are these just old wet clothes to keep hanging out on the line?

When do you grow up, if ever?

And now:

You suddenly wonder what dirndls are. You pick the answer that dirndls are some kind of skirt after all. While still in this lifetime, let’s find out what kind of dirndl a dirndl skirt is:

A dirndl consists of a bodice and skirt or a pinafore dress, a low-cut blouse with short puff sleeves, full skirt and apron. While appearing to be simple and plain, a properly made modern dirndl may be quite expensive as it is tailored and sometimes cut from costly hand-printed or silk fabrics.

The winter style dirndl has heavy warm skirts and aprons made of thick cotton, linen, velvet, or wool and long sleeves. The colors are usually rich and dark. The summer style is lighter and more revealing with short sleeves, and often is made of lightweight cotton. A dirndl would never be plain dark brown, as you had imagined your whole life long.