Joe and Bill buy swimwear
So, Bill and Joe wandered over to the other side of the big-box sporting goods store, with Joe pushing a cart in front of him. Joe didn’t know exactly what he would be looking for in the swimsuit racks. Sometimes the stores kept the briefs-style swimwear on separate racks from the regular swimwear, but sometimes the briefs ended up getting intermingled with the other suits, and it was often difficult to see what was in a rack like that without looking at each suit one-at-a-time.
Keep in mind that Bill and Joe were into the sixth week of the fall semester. The semester had started in late August, so now they were at the first week in October. The summer swimming season was long over, as the public pools had all closed on Labor Day a month ago. The sporting goods store tried to cater to the serious recreational fitness swimmers year round, and had not completely cleaned out their stock of suits.
Instead, all the men’s swimsuit inventory was just tossed together on a single large circular rack. There was some sizing info, as in suits separated in 28-30, 32-34, 36-38 groups, but that was about it. The suits on the rack were all mixed together in terms of style, some briefs, some jammers and some board shorts. The briefs were often hidden behind the longer suits, and not that easy to see. But the best thing was the big sign over the rack that said “All Clearance Swimwear, 60 percent off” Joe suddenly knew that in order to engage in what amounted to a diver-boy fantasy, he was not going to have to spend a lot of money.
Clearance swimwear racks always have interesting combinations of stuff. They include anything that did not move during the regular season for whatever reason, but usually because the style or color was considered by shoppers to be a bit oddball. And this clearance rack was no exception.
To be sure, there were a few suits that seemed surprising they were still there on clearance. There were some rather plain board shorts, and a few solid black jammers. There were even some standard blue Speedo® Endurance briefs in size 32. The tag said “Sapphire”. The price was marked 60% off, $14. But the sides looked to be nearly 3-inches wide, and would not give the diver-boy look Joe was thinking about.
Then Joe spotted the suit he really wanted, a Speedo® Solar suit in a maroon color. That had narrow 1 1/2 inch sides, but the size was only a 30. Joe wondered if he would be able to fit himself into such a skimpy suit, but the price was right at $12. Without thinking about this potential issue any more, Joe threw the suit into the cart, because it was the look in his fantasy.
Bill was starting to get a little bit excited by all of this too, and began to think that if Joe was able to find a suit without any real problems, maybe he could too. And there on the rack was another navy blue Speedo® Solar, size 30 too, and also marked $12. Bill threw that into the cart too.
Joe looked at the Jammers. Some of those were marked $14. Joe decided that if he was too embarrassed to wear his suit at the gym pool, he could pull a pair of black jammers over the little Solar brief. Bill thought that was a good idea, and he also threw a navy $14 jammer into the cart, his a Tyr brand size 32.
Bill and Joe checked out at the counter and walked with their respective clothing items back to the car for the trip back to the dorm room. Joe was thinking about the fun he would have trying on all his newly- acquired items. But remember, Bill and Joe both had a scheduled class today that met at 4:30 to 5;20, and it was nearly 4 pm by the time they had gotten checked out and hopped back into the car.
……To be continued
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