The search for a perfect Sally

Warning: Today's topic features a shopping experience that is unique to the female gender. It focuses in particular on a store whose merchandise is 100% female, yet which attracts a significant number of male customers who lose temporary yet complete control over the ability to keep their eyes in their head and the drool in their mouth.

I have had occasion to visit a store many of you are familiar with, ____'s Secret, so named because it is virtually impossible to tell, from a casual glance, what the store sells. You might easily mistake it for, say, a store selling auto parts, or computer cable organizers. I am sure the store's salespeople are tired of telling misguided customers, "No, I'm sorry, we do not carry life jackets for dogs. I can see how you might have been confused, though."

This store sells a number of products we shall call "Sally." Sally is intended for the upper portion of a woman's body, and although many other stores also carry Sallies, with this store's Sallies, you are not just getting an item of clothing. You are gaining an image. You are getting confidence. Possibly you are also spending your entire savings, but this is of little consequence.

The salesladies are all well acquainted with the store's many lines of Sallies. And so to help you find the perfect Sally and build your confident image, they ask questions that no one else asks you.

"What would you like your Sally to do for you?" is one of these questions.

Experience has taught me to be quite practical when shopping for Sallies. I do not have high expectations. So when I am asked what I would like Sally to do for me, I have a ready answer.

I would like it to fit, I say.

The woman who asks me this question looks slightly disdainful at my answer, as if she is not certain the store can meet this extravagant request. She contemplates sending me to Sears, if all I want is a Sally that fits. A Secret's Sally does not just fit. She tries again.

Am I looking for support? she asks. Do I want a Sally that multitasks?

Difficult as it is, I do not follow up on the offer of a multitasking Sally.

I just want one that fits, I insist.

And then a look of defeat starts to arise in the saleswoman's face, because the one thing the store does not carry is a Sally that comes in sizes closer to womens' shoe sizes than typical Sally sizes.

I know this. She knows this. _____'s Secret is based on the polite denial of the existence of petite body parts. But I have come here in the vague hope that somewhere, lurking in the back room perhaps, there might be a petite Sally.

I may as well have asked for car parts.

The saleswoman brightens as she thinks of another question: "Have we been measured today?"

I am not sure who "we" are, but whoever we are, we will never fit into a Sally larger than what we have worn for the past 20-some years. So we politely decline the offer of measurement.

Eventually, though, the woman does find a Sally for us. Me. It does not multitask, but it fits, and I, along with thousands of other women, can begin my journey to a confidence-building image.

And if that fails, I can always shop for car parts. Or doggy life jackets.