It's always too long. Or too tight. Or it puckers under the shoulders.

I don't care what you look like, how cool the dress is or under what circumstances you find yourself in that tiny room with nothing but you, the dress and all those "Oh God" thoughts in your head -- it's never a good time trying on clothes, let alone dresses.

As the bridesmaid, the bride -- either, doesn't matter -- I would rather get my teeth worked on than be stuck in a room, trying on a dress. Oddly enough, I've never been offered that option.

Never does a dress look how it's "supposed" to, or how you wanted it to. Never is it cooler than 97 degrees in the changing room, so you're hot and angry and nervous and hoping, dear God, hoping you don't rip the zipper as you try to get the thing over your head. Or are you supposed to step into it? Ugh! Forget it, it looks fine. So you sit on the stool and stare at it as it hangs on the wall, chewing your gum and angrily having a showdown with a dress and your genes.

(Once, a friend of mine from college got seriously stuck in a shirt in the mall and had to cut her way out of it with a nail clippers she had in her purse. Resourceful, yes; something I think about with not a little bit of fear every time I try something on, definitely.)

Over the next few days, I will have the disctinct pleasure of trying on two of the three dresses I'll be wearing in weddings this summer. I'm pretty sure none of them will fit and I'll be sitting there rocking on the changing room floor with my knees to my chin screaming, "NO I'M WEARING JEANS OR I'M NOT GOING. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME COME OUT."

Or, more likely, I'll say "Oh, no, it's fine. I just won't lift my arms up. It's OK, really. I don't lift them that much, anyhow."

Yikes.