Trace Got (No) Back

(I'm sorry I was away for so long.  Contemplation temporarily took the place of creativity.  But I'm back and I intend to post much more frequently.  I know I've said this before, but I was lying back then.  Get off my back.)

My girlfriend Diane and I played host a while back to our friends Paul and Jessica who revealed, in the course of the evening, a startling secret:

There's no back.

I know.  You're shocked.  Amazed.  You can't believe it. 

You don't get it.

They were waxing nostalgic about their days in various retail outlets, serving customers, and how everybody always asked:

"Are there any in the back?"

We all make this inquiry.   We're convinced that, just out of sight in the rear, there's an endless cornucopia of merchandise that we want but that they won't put out.  The store employees are trained not to show it to us unless we're smart enough to ask to see it.  We pride ourselves on our canny shopping talents when we ask if it's in the back. 

It's back there.  We just know it is.  

But what we know is so often wrong, and Paul and Jess broke the news:

There's no back. 

I was taken aback to learn this. 

Apparently there's just this vast, barren wilderness back there, with a howling wind chasing the tumbleweeds around, like the Australian Outback.

No, the clerks patiently explain when you demand green slippers and all they have is grey.  There aren't any green slippers in the back.  We tend to place product on the sales floor so as to facilitate its sale.  If there were a backlog of stuff in the back, that would constitute some pretty shoddy ordering practises, now, wouldn't it? 

They don't say this last part, of course.  They just grit their back teeth till sparks fly, hoping one will land in your hair and ignite you in a blazing backdraft of fury.

But consumers live on hope.  If there just might, possibly, conceivably be some green slippers in the back, it can't hurt to ask, can it?

Yes, it can.  By the end of their shifts, the sales help are prepared to seize the next nimrod who asks by the back of the neck, slay him, and bury him out back. 

Particularly if you ask the Dreaded Dork Follow-Up Question: "Well, could you check?" 

Check?  Okay, check, I gotcha.  Check out my finger pointing to the check-out.

(Note it's not the index one.)

I could quit asking if it's in the back.  But I'd be haunted eternally, always wondering, in the back of my mind:

"What if it WAS in the back, if only I'd asked? Maybe they had it on back order.  I wish I could go back in time." 

So we're left with a horrible choice: 

Talk back and be a dork or back off and be a loser.  

I pick dork.

What do you say, loser?