Time I Mistook a Mannequin for a Real Person and Apologized to It for 10 Minutes

Ive always considered myself a reasonably observant person. I notice when a friend gets a haircut. I can spot a typo from a mile away. Im the one who points out that the expiration date on the milk was three weeks ago. So, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself in a situation that called into question my entire perception of reality. A situation involving a mannequin, a heartfelt apology, and a slow-dawning horror that will haunt me to my dying day.

It was a Tuesday. I was in a department store, searching for a gift for my notoriously hard-to-shop-for mother. The store was one of those cavernous, brightly lit places with an aggressively cheerful soundtrack that makes you feel like you should be buying a lifetime supply of something. I was wandering through the men's section, which, for the record, I have no business being in, when I saw him.

He was tall, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, and had a look of such profound ennui on his face that I immediately felt a kinship with him. He was standing perfectly still, staring off into the middle distance, and I, in my infinite wisdom, assumed he was another lost soul trapped in the retail labyrinth.

"Tough day, huh?" I said, with a sympathetic chuckle.

He didn't respond. I figured he was just having a particularly bad day. We've all been there.

"I know, right?" I continued, "Sometimes I think they design these places to be impossible to escape. It's like a beige-colored maze with a 20% off sale at the end."

Again, nothing. Not even a flicker of a smile. This guy was a tough crowd.

"Look," I said, leaning in conspiratorially, "I'm not usually one to give unsolicited advice, but you look like you could use a friend right now. Whatever it is, it's probably not as bad as the time I tried to make a three-course meal for my in-laws and ended up setting off the fire alarm with a flambed appetizer."

I paused, waiting for him to share his own tale of woe. Instead, he just stood there, his chiseled features a mask of stoic indifference. It was then that I noticed something a little...off about him. His skin had a certain plastic-y sheen to it. And his eyes, which I had initially interpreted as being full of existential dread, were actually just painted on.

Thats when the slow, agonizing realization began to dawn on me. I wasnt talking to a person. I was talking to a mannequin.

http://googleusercontent.com/image_generation_content/0

I would like to say that I handled this discovery with grace and dignity. That I casually backed away, whistling a jaunty tune, and pretended like nothing had happened. But that would be a lie. What I actually did was freeze, my face a rictus of horror, and then, for some inexplicable reason, I started apologizing.

"Oh my God," I whispered, "I am so, so sorry. I thought...I mean, you just looked so...lifelike."

I babbled on like this for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only about ten minutes. I apologized for bothering him, for assuming he was having a bad day, for oversharing about my culinary disasters. I even, at one point, complimented him on his suit.

I only stopped when a sales associate, a teenager with a name tag that read "Chad," walked by and gave me a look that was equal parts pity and concern.

"Everything okay here, ma'am?" he asked.

"Just admiring the...uh...craftsmanship," I stammered, before turning and fleeing the men's section, my face burning with the heat of a thousand suns.

So, what's the moral of this story? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it's that we should all be a little more present in our daily lives. Or maybe it's that we shouldn't try to have deep, meaningful conversations with inanimate objects in the middle of a department store. Or maybe, just maybe, it's that if you're going to mistake a mannequin for a real person, at least make sure it's a good-looking one.