I went into the girl’s clothing store/tanning salon (Justice) yesterday to pick up a gift certificate for a birthday party.

 
While I was careful not to look directly into the tank-top racks or the sales clerk’s eyes, I did ask, “Do you have any white t-shirts?”

 
The girl very casually replied, “We won’t have your size.”

 
Um. Uh. Sorry….what?

 
How could she have known what size I was looking for? Did she think I was shopping at a girl’s clothing store/tanning salon for clothes for myself? If she had seen me in here before with one of my three kids, had she remembered their sizes and in that split second, had she calculated the size 5, 8-10 and 12 needed to fit any of my kids did not correlate with the sizes 6, 16 and 20 she somehow through Justice-magic knew were hanging on the rack?

 
I asked her, “Sorry, did you say you won’t have my size?” How did she know what size I wanted? I felt like I was missing something.

 
She came out from behind the counter and started walking towards the bright light at the centre of the store.

 
Was I supposed to follow her? What if I did? Would we be sucked into some neon vortex where kittens wearing sunglasses and stuffies with giant, plastic eyeballs would hand us lip gloss shaped like cupcakes for an eternity?

 
She led me to a rack of white t-shirts, pulled out a couple of hangers and showed me the sizes; 16 and 20.

 
“See,” she said. The popular sizes are gone.

 
“Perfect, I’ll take the 16.”

 
I don’t know why I took the 16. I just needed to feel like I’d won. Nobody in my family fit into a children’s size 16 but we could learn to love the t-shirt/nightgown.

 
Justice was served.