Unreal men are found everywhere

I’ve developed a whole new approach to men this week.

It started because of what happened in the post office. A yellow card told me to go to the desk to pick up a parcel that was too large for the box. Surprised me, since it was just CDs.

Nancy, the clerk, handed over a package about the size of a suit box.

“Gee, it’s big for just CDs,” I said. “Well, maybe they included a cute guy to play them for me.”

“An inflatable man,” Nancy said. She never missed a beat.

“That’s the only kind I’m interested in right now,” I said.

After we made some jokes about uses for inflatable men, I needed to get back to the car, because Otis was waiting. For a dog, he gets impatient. An older woman came in just as I was leaving and since Nancy and I were still laughing, I decided the joke needed to be shared.

“Make her tell you about my box,” I said.

By the time I got my big package into the trunk and was climbing into my car, the woman was back outside, laughing.

“Good idea. An inflatable man!” she called over to me.

With that mind set, I began seeing unreal men everywhere. A woman in a shop that sells NASCAR racing memorabilia has a life-sized cardboard figure of Kyle Petty. She has one of Dale Earnhardt, too, but that’s not funny anymore.

I remembered seeing a lifesized cutout of Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek in an antiques shop. I wanted to buy it to set in the lifestyle corner at the Post when I was in that section, because I’d been calling that space the “girl ghetto” and I thought Jean Luc would relieve its overwhelming femaleness. Jean Luc cost $25, though, so in the end I just moved to a different department.

These days at my gym, I see a huge poster of an utterly gorgeous, blond, tan male with rippling muscles. He’s shiny with oil. Musk probably. And he’s kind of reclining, wearing only a casually but artfully tossed white towel. I think he’s there to inspire us in our ladies-only environment.

This started me thinking about all the ways one could use a make-believe man. If you dislike eating alone, you could set him up in the chair across the table from you in restaurants. I’ve seen couples there who talked so little one of them might as well have been cardboard.

You could prop one into a easy chair by a lamp in front of a window at night to make the house look occupied. I’ve seen men in recliners who didn’t move any more than a cutout.

I’m planning some long trips in a minivan pretty soon. If I worried about safety (I don’t), I could inflate a man figure to sit in the passenger’s seat. Then, as I drove, I could sing so people who saw us would think we were talking. The best part of this is that he wouldn’t tell me how awful my singing is.

We could travel as a pair, getting special couples‚ weekend getaway prices in hotels, but he wouldn’t eat anything, which would eliminate the cost of having a real man along.

I think Nancy came up with the best advantage of having an inflatable man, though.

“When you don’t want him around, you could just let the air out,” she said.

Contact Sara Pitzer at spitzer@salisburypost.com .