Mannequin Hands

Mannequin Hands and mine 2016

One day when I was about five- or six-years old, I was shopping with my family at the Sears & Roebuck department store at the old Southgate Plaza in West Seneca. Passing through the woman's clothing department, we walked right by a mannequin dressed in a woman's outfit. Back then, all mannequins intrigued me, but this one especially did because it was standing right there at the end of an aisle, so close, and, at my eye level, the mannequin’s hands looked so real! Instead of plain, funny flesh colored hands, the mannequin hands had wrinkles and a few spots – they looked just like the hands of an older woman! The rest of the mannequin was made to look like an old woman too – dress, face, hair, makeup, hat – wasn’t it neat that the details of an old woman’s hands were also attended to?

This was all so fascinating, that I stopped, and then I did something I swear I had never done before – I walked over to the mannequin and stroked its hands. And that’s when I found out it was not a mannequin! The old woman smiled, indulging me in my childish mistake. She seemed tickled by the incident, and I guess that’s why my parents did not get upset with me.

mannequin heads today!

Now it is several decades later, and mannequins today do not have faces, or genders, and sometimes, they do not even have heads! They are no longer funny flesh colored, but rather they are inhuman colors like lime green, snowy white, steely silver and more. One day when I told Mike I was writing up this story, he and I went to a department store to check out the mannequins and take some pictures. The mannequins are still so very intriguing, but a child today is not likely to mistake an old lady for one.

no money spent, good times had!

Now I am several decades older, and when I look at my hands, they seem familiar to me – where have I seen these hands before? Sometimes they remind me of my Mom's hands. Sometimes they remind me of my Dad's hands. And sometimes my mind goes all the way back to Sears, and I realize that my hands today are the hands of the old lady mannequin from ‘way back then who was not a mannequin at all but rather an actual old woman whose day was made when a strange child walked up to her in Sears and touched her!

Looking at my hands today is kind of like being in a time machine – and I am the little girl stroking my own old lady hands!

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