On Mauls

I rarely visit malls. I visited one recently for anthropological purposes, and remembered why I do not frequent them. I get confused in malls. At malls, you get "gift cards" from clothing stores that give you $25 off your next purchase of $50 or more if you make a $75 purchase today (they capitalize on Americans' general discomfiture about math), but they must be redeemed in the weeks that the next season's full-price offerings become available. I always think that this is a good deal and spend the required $75, even if I have to throw in a costume jewelry brooch to get there. Then I forget that I have to go by a certain date, and I'm stuck with wallet-insert gift card detritus and a hideous brooch.

Mall developers are tricky folks. No such thing as side-by-side up and down escalators. To get to the escalator to go up to the next level, you are forced to traverse around the area of the entire floor so that you may be tempted to investigate the retail offerings of stores you would not previously have considered visiting. They also name the mall something clever like "Montgomery Village Shopping Towne at Roosevelt Center" to give the aura of a quaint outdoor community shopping district instead of a windowless box filled with stale air and artificial palm trees. And we fall for it.

Malls have entire stores dedicated to expensive pens that come with manuals and auto-balancing gyroscopes, as well as kiosks filled with baseball caps with flashing neon logos, for the discerning Sox fan who figures he can save a buck on airfare to Sin City by just wearing Vegas on his head. The most alarming thing about malls is that I don't know how the average person can afford to shop there. Even the generic stores like Gap and Express have dress pants with a base price of $60. I coveted a knit scarf until I realized it was $75. There are $400 toasters, department store sections dedicated to "resort wear" (which consists of tacky windbreakers priced at $150), $250 Juicy Couture t-shirts (t-shirts!) and the mythical $150 Seven jeans, which I thought everyone was just making up until I saw them in Nordstrom. If malls are for average folks, I can't even afford to be hoi polloi.

Story: When I go out during the day, I do not make any effort to impress anyone and my first priority is comfort. The only time I pay attention to what I'm wearing when I go to the mall is when I know I'll be trying on clothes, in which case I do not wear a button-down shirt as they prove to be inefficient in the changing process. This is especially true when you have to put your clothes back on and pad out of the dressing room in your socks to get another size of the item you are trying on. This is because "Vanessa," who is helping you today and wants you to let her know if you need anything, has suddenly disappeared, and your plaintive and tentative calls of "Vanessa?" from behind the door go unacknowledged. Yet when you are at the register and they ask you who was helping you for the purpose of entering the commission code, you obseqiously and squeakily report that Vanessa assisted you today, because she is shooting you a menacing glare from the hosiery section. And you don't want to mess with a woman who knows socks.

So on this visit to the mall I was wearing jeans, a zip-up hoodie, and a t-shirt that prominently displayed the word "Amsterdam." Naturally, the security guard in the overpriced kitchen store was suspicious, and asked me if I needed any help. I responded, "No, I'm just exploring your amazing selection of kitchen accessories." I thought that perhaps my articulate verbiage would disarm him. Apparently this was not effective, as he proceeded to "surreptitiously" follow me around the store as I examined Le Creuset enameled cookware and dedicated chestnut roasting pans. When I left without the security gates beeping, he looked slightly disappointed that his profiling did not yield an accurate result. However, I saw him brighten as he realized that he had likely thwarted a theft with his clever surveillance.

Malls are not for people like me, but neither are thrift stores. One time at a thrift store, a drunk woman burned me with a cigarette (I have the scar to prove it). But if I have to shop at Target, with the ill-fit of the clothes being a trade-off for the bargain price, at least I can hide out from Vanessa.