So I'm at the dry cleaners yesterday afternoon, to pick up a winter jacket.

The woman behind the counter could not find it. So she fooled around with some paperwork before hitting on what she regarded as a better idea.

She would turn on the motorized carousel draped with hundreds of items of apparel and I could watch for my jacket.

There were two problems with this plan.

1) Each shirt, dress or whatever was wrapped in plastic. Sure, it was clear plastic. But it made it hard to see what was what.

2) The tightly arranged clothing went by so fast it was all pretty much a blur.

No, she was not trying to be funny.

That was not helping. So I went behind the counter and conducted a walking tour of the stuff hanging on the now-stopped moto-rack. I did not find my jacket.

At that point, it appeared that the plan was to hope it turned up. I was not thrilled with this, but what are you going to do? I said I would check back this weekend.

Halfway to my car out in the parking lot, I heard a voice.

"Mr. Turner! Mr. Turner!"

It was the woman from the cleaners. Like Neville Chamberlain waving the worthless "Peace in our time" paper signed by Hitler, she held up a note from the main office explaining that my jacket would be ready Friday instead of Wednesday.

I thanked her and silently hoped super-vision would not be required when I came back to collect it.

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