THE CAPE OF FEAR

As my time at Podiatry wears on (clothing retail pun intended), Nelson’s glossy facade is beginning to weather much like a golden obelisk marking the middle of some Italian piazza that has been exposed to hundreds of years of precipitation.  Whereas in the early days, my performance shone brilliantly, my bit has become harder to sustain as the rust gathers on my facade and the cracks begin to show.  I feel like Sinbad’s character in the smash-hit film and timeless classic Houseguest; initially able to fool the world into believing him to be a world-renowned dentist only to become subjected to a series of ever more difficult tasks impossible to fake.  And where did he end up?  Well, if I remember the plot correctly, AND I DO BECAUSE I LOVE THAT MOVIE AND WILL UNTIL THE DAY I DIE,  even though his true identity is discovered, he still ends up with a sweet book deal and a red Porsche.

I fear that, soon, my identity will be found out.  (But worry not, dear readers, for I have no doubt that a career as a novelist and a new automobile is in my future just like it was for Kevin Frank of Houseguest.)  Why does Nelson fear that the Podiatry community may soon turn on him and  instead of lavishing him with applause, throw weeks-old, moldy tomatoes at him on stage from their seats in the audience?  3 substantial blunders, my friends.

First, the cape of fear.  I was on a fitting-room roll for two months, relying on my master instincts to kick in and give me the perfect hook-line-and-sinker when customers came out looking like clowns.  “You look dashing,” I could say with a wink, and they’d head for the register, wallets already drawn.  That is until I met the cape of fear.

More sweater than cape, these hideous things had been hanging in the sale room for ages, cast aside by the sane, inspected cautiously by the adventurous, and touched by the fools.  But until this day, no human had been asinine enough to actually TRY ONE ON.  Out comes...we’ll call her Elmo...wrapped in the cape.

Let me try to explain what this thing is.  Pattern and colors: (I’ve got Sinbad on the mind, so I’ll keep going with him as my referent for awhile) A mix between a Cosby sweater and the perplexing conglomeration of shapes and colors you’d see on one of the jumpsuits Sinbad wore in his early 90’s stand-up specials.  Cut: A sweater, one side of which came down to the hip, the other side of which hung like a towel on a clothesline all the way down to the floor.  

“How do you wear this?”  she asked, tentatively. 

I knew I was in a bind.  “Uh,” I stammered, unable to truly recover from the disgust bubbling up in my body in reaction to this garment, “I, uh....” her stare went straight through Nelson and into my true self.  I rushed over to where she was standing in the mirror, trying to recover.  “You...TIE it!” I said quickly, grabbing the yard of extra material and twisting it into a knot with the other side which gave it a kind of straightjacket look.  

She regarded herself in the mirror and said, skeptically, “I...don’t think that’s quite right.”          

“Well,” I said, about to proffer another response, but realized that the hole I’d dug was insurmountable.  My character deflated entirely.  “I...DON’T KNOW,” I admitted and shrunk into the shadows to lick the wounds of defeat by humbly folding $100 pairs of yoga pants for backstock.

The other two blunders to follow...