Not right, nor orderly.

Why old men go shopping

So far these vignettes have described past events, some as much as 50 years ago.  Today I want to tell about my shopping trip yesterday morning.  

This weekend I'm driving with my friend Gale to Cleveland to attend a memorial service for her sister, who passed away in November.  On Wednesday I decided that I'd better check whether any of my suits still fit me.  Since I've retired I've been wearing jeans and casual tops most of the time.  Even when I wear an old dress shirt, I never button the collar to wear a tie.  I found a suit that fit ok, but I could not button any of my business shirts at the collar.  I couldn't even get them around in a choke hold.  

Since I know how ridiculous a dress shirt looks when you try to use a necktie to hold the collar together, I decided I'd better get a new shirt before we left.  When I went into Macy's and asked for an oxford cotton dress shirt, the sales clerk had to talk to her manager to find out what language I was speaking.  When I asked if she could measure my new necksize, she ran around the corner and then came back to say that "he" (pointing around the corner) could help me.  Around the corner, neither she nor "he" were anywhere to be seen.  Just a crowd of Christmas shoppers at the cash register.

I walked down the mall to Lord & Taylor where I found white, cotton dress shirts that weren't quite as soft and thick as oxfords, but they'd do.  I still wasn't sure about the necksize.  Additionally, one set of shelves had shirts with necksize and sleeve length marked.  On the other side of the display, the same brand gave you the necksize, but absolutely nothing about sleeve length.  And they were $10 cheaper.  I took two shirts with the 17" necks I estimated I needed, one with sleeve length and the other without, up to the line at the cash register.  As I was moving towards the register, a man about my age whom I'd seen out of the corner of my eye looking at the same shirt displays got one step ahead of me in the line.  He had one shirt.  I had two.  Neither of us were fast enough for the middle-aged woman shopper who somehow or other slipped ahead of us and put her items on the counter in front of the cashier, turning and innocently asking,"Oh, was I first?"

When she finished, the man in front of me started to explain to the saleslady, that he had to go to a wedding and that he'd found that his old shirts with 17.5" necks didn't fit any more.  Could she help him find the right size?  Before the young woman could move away, I spoke up and said, "While you're at it, I need the same help, too."  As she walked away, I said to the other man that I hadn't warn a tie since I'd retired.  He smiled, delighted that he wasn't the only man in the embarrassing situation of not knowing and having to ask for help to find out his clothing measurements.  He said that he had a rack of six dress shirts at home that didn't fit his neck any more.  He'd always been 17.5.  When the sales clerk returned, he put his arm around me and told her that we were both in the same boat.  

She sent us over to the suit section where we could see a woman tailor measuring a young man as we walked up.  I told her that we just needed to know our neck sizes.  Quickly she put the tape around my neck and said "17.5."  I headed back before I heard what size the other man was.

As I was writing that last paragraph, I realized that I had not done what a woman would probably have done.  She would have stayed, talked with her new acquaintance to find out who was getting married (and maybe her neck size), and where her acquaintance fit into the wedding party, and so on. Her acquaintance, if she was a woman, would have found out where I was going to need a new shirt, etc., etc.  We were men, however, and went our separate ways without thinking about it.

That's wrong.  My father would have determined within five minutes of conversation that he and the other man were 32nd cousins once removed or that he knew the priest doing the wedding.  Something like that.  Some men are more gregarious than others.  In any case, back to the story.

Now that I knew the right size, I only had to deal with the missing info on sleeve length on the less expensive shirts.  As yet another saleswoman was scrutinizing every tag and slip on that shirt, I saw that the other man had returned, and then gone off to look at other brands of shirts.  The clerk never found any information anywhere on sleeve length so I said to forget about that shirt.  They could deal with that problem later.  I just wanted to finish buying the shirt whose size I knew and get out of there.  I was already long past my tolerance level for clothes shopping.