There's Leather and Then There's Adult Leather

The post below comes to us from a young Phaea Crede. She has faced the difficulty of learning to spell her own name, and many other lessons, like the one below.

When I was 16 years old I got my first job: Working at the Gap in Harvard Sq.

I was wide eyed and naive at 16 when it came to the world of "normal people". I was a bit of an off beat kid, sort of like now, only with worse hair. Consequently, many of the odd things that went on at the Gap were just chalked up to "normal people" choices. For example: intense love for pleated khakis, customers that needed help finding a shirt they were looking directly at, or V-neck sweaters.

During my training, as I was walked through the basics of manning the register and using the stockroom, my manager showed me a set of keys.

"These are for the (whispered) leather."

Unable to decipher her whispered adjective on the word "leather", I, for some reason, assumed that she was referring to a stock of leather sex toys and apparatus that the Gap sold on the sly, but only some people knew about. And I completely accepted it because this was a strange adult world.

And even though I saw the key being used over and over again to unlock expensive leather jackets off the floor displays, it was many many years until I finally realized that the Gap did not have a secret menu of leather dildos in the back room.

I was a bit disappointed.