The Dancing of My Soul, or, Life in the Gulag

At work the other night I had an odd experience:

I spent a long time in the audio/video section and noticed a girl wandering around. This rather attractive female approached me multiple times, and each time she hesitated. Perhaps she was unsure whether or not I was an employee, or maybe she was just very shy.

Finally she came up to me, said hello, then whispered so softly that I could not understand her. It sounded like, “Could you help me find a video on sholryplodsm?”
I said, “Sure! Um, sorry, what is the name of the video?”
Still whispering, she repeated more clearly: “Souls of Dancing.” . . . or perhaps she said, “Solzhenitsyn.” I really couldn’t tell.

I had two options: take her to the 792’s (dancing section) or take her to the 891’s (Russian authors section). Either option could have been disastrous. Suppose I had shown her the Russian authors section:

“Well, here we have videos on major Russian authors, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, etc. I bet Solzhenitsyn is around here somewhere.”
She would have, potentially, given me an odd look and said, “I’m actually looking for a video on dancing called ‘Souls of Dancing,’ not a video on Russian authors.” I would have looked like a fool.

The other scenario could have been equally awkward:

“Here is our dancing section: ballet, belly-dancing, ballroom dancing, and um, other dancing type things. Souls of Dancing will be right here if it’s not checked out.”
She, hypothetically, would have scowled before informing me: “Solzhenitsyn is a Russian author, not a ballet dancer.”

My final option was to act clueless and refer her to a librarian, which I eventually did. Okay, I guess I had a fourth option—to ask her to repeat the name of the video again, which might have averted this whole confused episode, but I didn’t want to embarrass her.