On my way to the office on Thursday morning, I stopped by the dry cleaner to drop off some clothes. I tried to open the door to the shop, but it was locked. I tugged at it a couple more times before I noticed a note on the door. Scribbled, barely legibly on the back of a dry cleaning ticket was, “Using the bathroom. Will reopen at 8:45.” When Mother Nature calls, she doesn’t care that I really need to drop off my cleaning so I can make my 9:15 conference call. Anyway, it was already 8:42, and three minutes wasn’t going to kill me, I thought.

So I waited. 8:45 came and passed, and so I waited some more. By 8:52 I began wondering what was taking so long. At 8:53 those thoughts morphed into visualizations of what was taking so long. And by 8:53½, I began talking to myself about anything in an attempt to get the visions out of my head. While this worked temporarily, I quickly bored myself and had to start singing.

When 8:57 rolled around there was still no sign of the clerk. Maybe he had to go offsite to use the bathroom. Maybe he was passed out on the toilet, or engaged in a page-turner he couldn’t put down. Whatever the cause, this was now a game of wills. And I was determined to wait it out at any cost.

By 9:00 a.m., I was feeling the caffeine withdrawals. If I didn’t get coffee soon I could turn physically ill. Just as I was about to succumb to the pangs, I heard movement from inside the store. Then I saw the clerk emerging from the back of the store. He unlocked and opened the door. And as he greeted me, all of the visions from 8:53 rushed through my mind at once. I couldn’t stop them and, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t pretty.

Tongue-tied and in a cold sweat, I quickly dropped my clothes onto the counter and rushed out the door. I haven’t even been back to pick up my cleaning. But I’m sure that will be my last trip there. If only the note had said something different.