Today I stopped at Sports Authority to see if they had any New Balance cross trainers in my size, which is 7D. For those of you who have no idea what the D means (i.e., You Whose Feet Are Normal), it refers to the width. “AA” is narrow, “B” is normal, “C” is wide, “D” is wider, “EE” even wider still, etc. Some shoe manufacturers group “C” and “D” together as “wide,” although “C” size shoes are too narrow for me.

Anyway. At Sports Authority I went straight to their clearance aisle. They usually have a lot of New Balance shoes on clearance, but you have to dig through it all to know for sure. There was a young male employee on a ladder in the middle of the aisle rearranging the clearance shoes. He was in my way a little, but I tried to dig around him and his ladder as best I could.

After a few minutes he got down and asked if he could help me find something. I was glad he asked, because the shoes were all out of order and I thought he might know whether there was a shoe in my size since he’d just been rearranging them. I told him I was looking for New Balance cross trainers in 7D.

“Seventy?” he asked.

“7D,” I repeated, emphasizing the “D” sound, because to me it sounded like he had said “seventy.”

He looked a little confused and stared at the shelves.

“It’s always hard to find my size,” I said, making friendly conversation as I continued to root through the shoes. “7D isn’t a common size.”

He stared blankly at the shoes.

Finally he looked back at me with an apologetic expression on his face. “I don’t think our shoes come in that size. Seventy is a really high number,” he said, as if explaining something very obvious to an extremely dim person.

I tried to be nice and smile. “I know. I’m looking for 7-D.” And I drew a “D” shape in the air with my finger.

He got it. “Ohhh! Like 7D. I thought you meant…”

Then he looked back at the shoes and picked up a couple pairs, checked the sizes, and put them down again. “I don’t think we carry that size.”

I said, “Oh, you do. I always buy my shoes here.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe you should study your shoe section a little more.”

And then I left.

I’m not sure where Sports Authority is getting their employees from, but this guy sure wasn’t an authority on the shoes he was supposed to be selling today.