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No matter, a world opened to me at the bottom of that staircase on an uncharacteristically sunny day in downtown Seattle. It was a Tall Girls Store. (Not just a store for tall girls, it's actually called Tall Girls. Neat, huh?)

Everywhere I looked there were pants hanging from racks that were just that much higher than you'd find in regular clothing stores. Shirts with six or seven buttons running down the front instead of five. There were sales women who I knew wouldn't give me That Look when they said "If you need another size let me know." If you're tall, you know the look. They get this little smile on their face and a crease near their ears that just screams "We might have those pants in tall, but if you ask for gigantor, there's really nothing I can do."

I walked around for a full five minutes just running my hands over the fabrics, feeling the sleeves of shirts that would extend to my wrist and still fit around the waist. Of pant legs whose hems I wouldn't have to let out or lie and say they were "capris." It was a sensory and emotional high. Each rack an island of freakish proportions similar to my own. And then a sales girl came over to me and asked "could I help you find something? Maybe something in silk or velvet?" I pulled my hands away from the goods, knowing I'd been caught fondling their merchandise.

But I didn't care. I just said "I'm looking for fitted shirts." I reveled in the fact that there was no need to attach the adendum "hopefully some that are actually fitted around my torso ending below my waistline and not three-quarter sleeves?" Oh, it was phenomenal.

She walked me over to a rack where shirts of all sizes hung. She left me there to gawk at the lengths of fabric like a schoolboy with a crush. Or a fangirl being handed the object of her affection's underwear--thrilled, but almost afraid to touch.

Conditioned by society and the world of modern retail, I automatically reached for the size 13's, giddily grabbing three and running off to the dressing rooms. But when I put them on--I was shocked. What was this? The arm's sleeves went all of the way out just past my wrists! The shirt hung to that perfect place above my hips! But--and this is what got me--the "fitted" shirt wasn't fitted at all. It hung limply at my sides, not at all accentuating the curvature of my female form--the form that almost always necessarily hides behind a baggy shirt and pants, too long to be outfitted in modern wear meant to hug, and too broke to not shop off-the-rack. Could it be that I needed a... size 9? Eight, even?

The salesgirl came by my booth asking if she could get me anything and I mumbled out a single-digit number, handing her the baggy shirts. She left with an unphony smile and returned scant minutes later with the merchandise in hand.

I pulled one sleeve on and then the other, a rumbley feeling low in my gut, both from the fact that I could feel that this second skin of cotton and spandex was my destiny, and also that I was really hungry. Possibly craving Italian.

My fingers shook as I slipped the buttons through their thread encrusted slots, unaccostumed to the large number of buttons necessary to hold a garment of this length modestly together.

I then looked in the mirror. A little shriek escaped my throat at the sight of myself. The salesgirl asked if I was all right but I ignored her, too taken with the image of my reflection.

It was a fashion masterpiece. A retail coup. This. Shirt. Fit.

I gazed at myself in the mirror for minutes until a knock came on the door asking if there as A) anyone in here, and B) if I was okay. I then quickly changed and plopped all of my shirts onto the register countertop, ignorning price-tags and credit woes. Oh, the glory of purchasing.

As I left the store with my also-tall cousin in tow, I had to resist every urge in my body to hug the kind sales people and other patrons, like myself, that can never find perfectly-fitting non-altered clothes, outside the walls--the oasis--of the Tall Girls store.

God bless us, every long-boned one.

"I kinda like tall girls, its kinda Groovy." -Davy Jones