Male mortification at the department store

If there is anything more terminally mortifying for a grown man than to be left standing in the ladies underwear section of a major department store, I do not know what it is.

Call it what it is. Underwear. This is not lingerie. Lingerie is what Victoria Ain’t Got No Secrets sells. A few pieces of colored dental floss with some less-than-strategically attached lace that comes off faster than it was put on. That is lingerie.

It’s underwear. It may LOOK like some of the stuff that appears in Fredricks Probably Set Hollywood On Fire. When it is on a rack next to size 50 drawers that could hold some small African villages and the drawers have LEGS, it is all underwear. 

When a man sees a bra that comes with a padlock on the back, rebar and shoulder-mounted winches, any idea of romance is immediately crushed under the feet of the of the oddly dressed elephant that charges through the African village chasing the model in stilettos and the see-through nightie of a man’s imagination.

Whew.

Testify men. Stand up and say Amen! Brother, I have been to the mountain and I have seen acres of material that’s as interesting as a used body bag. You are not alone out there, unless of course you are actually standing in the underwear department of a major store reading this column. Then, yeah, you’re alone.

Men still know what I mean. We can be standing there with 15 other guys, all holding purses and an armload of industrial-strength supportive garments and we are alone. We’re also wishing we were defending a small African village from a rampaging elephant.

I firmly believe a number of men have actually died of shock upon being abandoned in the underwear section after hearing the words “Hold this, honey. I’ll just be a minute.”

Women sucker us into this. They ask if we want to go shopping, an activity most men regard as something that has to be done because in order to get stuff, we must buy it. The women say there’s a big hardware and sporting goods section we can go to. Immediately we also start thinking about the electronics department with 150 inch TVs which is next to the furniture with the giant leather recliners. Shopping doesn’t sound so bad right then.

We go and find the recliners, kick back and flip the TV to one of the sports channels. When a sales associate comes by, we say, “Just trying it out. Need a new one at the house,” and the poor clerk is so afraid of offending a potential customer, he heads off to the toy department.

Eventually the lady comes back. She’ll either have a buggy so full of stuff you immediately want to call your stock broker and tell him to buy shares in the store or she has nothing. Smart men realize the lady with nothing in her hands is the kind of warning sign which would make the president burrow into the Rocky Mountains with just his hands.

“Just one more thing,” she says. “It’ll only take a minute. Then we’ll go. Come on.”

The living death sentence now levied, we men put on our shoes and leave the recliner bound for a lifetime in retail sales purgatory. Women may actually believe it’s only a few minutes and their watch may agree. Recent astrophysics studies prove time in the underwear department of a major store is not like time anywhere else in the universe. A minute there is enough time outside that section of the store for entire solar systems to form and develop advanced civilizations which are driven extinct by their version of elephants wearing super heavy duty women’s underwear.

I must admit, I have just thought of one thing worse. Being called upon to actually enter said section of the major store and buy something because your woman couldn’t get to the store and you happened to be handy. 

Ladies, never do this to your man. Take him out in the back yard and shoot him instead. 

Don’t believe me. Ask which he’d rather you do. Chances are good he’ll lie and say he doesn’t mind picking the stuff up for you, but if you had him hooked to a lie detector at that moment, it would explode.