It Was So Embarrassing

                It Was So Embarrassing

  It was 1985. I was going through a divorce at the time so I had to live in this cock roach motel. I got a job across the street working at this sporting goods store. I don’t even like sports but I needed the job to pay for my motel. Cripes, I could write a whole book just on that experience alone.

 Anyway, I worked in the exercise department selling exercise bikes, weights and that sort of thing. It was the time of year when the school kids were starting to buy the equipment they needed to play football.  I was new to this sports stuff because my Dad never was into sports himself so he never taught me anything. I worked on cars and hung around the park with the guys shooting the shit and smoking most of the time. 

 Well it was on the first or second day working there when this woman came up to me and said her son needed a girdle for football. HUH??? I wanted to say, “Why don’t you let him wear one of yours?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. So I ran to the manager of the store and he told me the football girdles were in the back of the store. I went in the back but I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t even know what they looked like. I came out and the lady asked me. “What’s taking so long?” I was getting really stressed out on my second day on the job. I saw the manger and yelled, “I need a girdle and I don’t know where they are.” 

 I was ready to quit right then and there. I don’t know what happened to the Mother that wanted to buy a girdle for her son.  I never did find one and the manger was too busy to help me. So I just stayed in the back room and pretended to look for one until she left. 

 After a couple of weeks I was getting accustomed to working there, although, I hated it. I was told to keep the Jock Strap Display stocked up because they were selling fast because of the football season. Then one day another one of the Mothers came into the store and asked me, “I need a supporter for my son.” In the Display Rack they have small, medium and large. I needed to know what size her boy needed because once you buy them you cannot return them. “What size does he need?” I asked the Mother. She looked at me for a couple of seconds and said, “I don’t know.” I was really trying to be helpful. So I asked her, “Well how big is he?” The Mother starred at me and started to get red in the face. “I don’t know I never saw him. I think I better let him come in and get it,” she told me and then ran away from me. “Huh? What was that all about,” I thought to myself. I didn’t know what I had done to get her all flustered like that. Then it dawn on me when I had asked her “Well how big is he?” The mother must have thought I was asking her how big his genitals where. Now I knew why she ran away. What I was trying to ask the Mother was “How tall is he, you know, how old is he,” so I could get an idea of what size to give her. I guess I should have phrased it a little different at the time. I was so embarrassed when I realized the mistake I had made.