Lauren and I are both bargain hunters when it comes to clothes shopping, so we decided this past Sunday night to take a quick trip to one of the major department stores here in town. We went about an hour before the store closed, so we figured it would be pretty empty. I can count on one hand how many cars were in the parking lot when we pulled in. There were many great deals to be had (some clothes were 90% off), so Lauren and I grabbed several things for her to try on and we headed to the closest dressing room area. I told Lauren that I wanted to take a quick look at the clothes right outside the dressing room area and I would join her in a minute or two. When I walked in to rejoin Lauren, imagine my surprise when I found an adult man waiting right outside of one of the dressing room stalls. This dude was at least a foot taller and about 50 pounds heavier than me and he kept standing on his tippy toes and peering over the top of the dressing room stall next to Lauren. I looked at him for about 15-30 seconds and then said, "excuse me, but this is a women's dressing room." He looked right at me and said, "oh, I know, I'm just here with my wife!" I wouldn't have had a problem if he was outside the dressing room area, but Lauren was in the dressing room stall right next to the guy's wife and she wasn't fully dressed. I kept looking at him, not giving him a dirty look really, but after a minute or so he finally picked up on my "body language" and left. Yikes. I told Lauren I felt like a dressing room "bouncer." I have brought Dominic in with me to dressing room stalls, but he's a little guy. A grown man in a women's dressing room area didn't seem quite right to me. Most stores will have a clerk either in the dressing room area or near it to monitor what's going on. Since it was so close to the store closing for the night, the clerks were kind of scattered throughout the whole store. I think this guy truly didn't think there was anything wrong with him being in the women's dressing room with his wife. Maybe if there wasn't anybody else in the dressing room area, it might have been okay, but it certainly wasn't since my teenage daughter was in there!!! How about you? have you ever had to "enforce" the unwritten rules of dressing room "etiquette?"
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
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