Mall Rats

This weekend, I went to the mall.

I am not really a shopper. I know that some people really enjoy just walking aimlessly through a store, or even a series of stores, in a zombie-like zen state, where "shopping" is a passive experience. This is not me. I don't understand going to a store if you have no intention of buying something or no pressing need. Maybe it was all those years working retail. A store is a place of business to me, filled with busy people, folding sweaters, filling four-way racks and planning floor coverage. It is not a place to linger and leave things in disarray just because you have a few hours to kill.

I only like to shop when I have something I need to buy. I want to walk right into the store, find exactly what I am looking for ON SALE, make a purchase and go home. No chit chat with the sales clerk. No rummaging around to see what else they have. If I am going to waste an afternoon, I would rather do it in front of the TV or lounging on an adirondack chair in the yard than under bland florescent lights with chirpy 70s cover tunes droning on in the background.

I was headed out to New Jersey to attend Romaine's post-Baptism party. I tried to convince my roommate Mike to spend his single free weekend day out there with me, but he wasn't having it. He had a list of things to buy and it had a big red Target circle on the top of the list. So I decided it was easier to drop him at the mall along the way, attend Romaine's party for a bit, and then meet up with Mike in the food court next to the Panda Express for some Orange Chicken. It was a perfect plan.

Romaine lives about as far away from me as humanly possible for two people who work so closely together. I suppose I could have bought a house in Connecticut, but why be so unruly? Still, it is a solid hour and a half between us, especially when you factor in a drop off at the Palisades Park mall along the way. When I arrived in the lesbian wilderness, the party was in full, loud swing. The Patterson clan was there, cackling up a storm on the wrap-around porch. Romaine was inside, a serene Buddhist calm about her, spurred by the beer in her hand and the sleeping baby upstairs. And the louder the Pattersons get, the quieter Romaine gets. She is more like her mother than I think she would like to believe.

In the kitchen, Romaine's gregarious sister Sabina was weilding a large knife, scrapping the charded remains off the outside of a large hunk of meat. Apparently, the roast wrapped in bacon sounded delicious, although the barbeque had other plans, igniting the bacon-fat into a beef inferno that could not be put out. Sabina rescued the meat and the meal was sensational nonetheless. Just, like the Pattersons themselves, unnecessarily dramatic.

I made my quick escape from the party and sped back to the mall where an unfed Mike was anxiously awaiting Panda. Parking at the mall was insane. It was like Christmastime, as I drove around in circles for fifteen minutes waiting for a space to open up. Inside, controlled chaos reigned as droves of straight people clustered outside the Lane Bryant, FYE, and other notable retail chains. In a way, the mad melee was exciting, and it is easy to get caught up in the excitement and mob mentality a good mall can deliver. Plus, what is not to love about a mall that has everything you could possibly imagine?

Even though I was stuffed from Romaine's party, I still managed to put away both servings of orange chicken. Egged on by the frenzy of the crowd and the sugar high from my large Dr. Pepper, I even bought a mountable shower caddy and a towel rack for my bathroom. They had been on my own list for quite sometime, and I found them quickly in the lavishly oversized Linens 'N Things. The caddy was even ON SALE! Mall life is definitely not for me, but the occasional visit certainly can have its charms. I just have to remember to not go back before January.