.:i would rather…:.

…gouge my eyeballs out with a spork. …tear my nails out with a pair of rusty pliers. …slam my head in a sliding glass door. again. and again. and again…than spend a bunch of time in the mall.

i say this because, as i came home from spending approximately one hour in the mall on saturday afternoon, i was thinking these violent thoughts. why? because the barton creek mall is filled with more pre-pubescent hormonal activity, teen angst and awkwardness and general human malaise than i can ever remember there being in any of the malls i’ve ever been to. i feel like just about every kid has got to be either:

a) on some kind of drug…like coke or speed or smack.

or

b) some kind of wanna’ be pimp or ho or emo rockstar (lots of teen dudes wearing huge gold/silver chains and fake diamond earrings and stupid bluetooth cell phone earpieces; lots of teen girls wearing skirts and jeans and tank-tops that make me feel a tiny bit uncomfortable, even given my fairly liberal stance on stuff; lots of teen dudes and girls sporting the black-dyed hair in my eyes/heroin addict/i don’t give a f**k about anybody or anything look and wearing iPod earphones as an accessory)

or

c) both.

loud. obnoxious. clueless. talking to hear their own voices. experimenting with their newly discovered power of their own sex…but completely awkward about it. gaudy. annoying. and here i am walking around in the midst of all this feeling annoyed and superior and educated and high and mighty above it all trying to find a pair of f**king shoes for myself, thinking, “jesus. was i like this?

and the annoyance burns hotter because i realize that the answer is probably, ‘yes.’ and hotter still because the thought that follows is, ‘you’re just getting old.’

i started to think about how much i loved going to the mall when i was younger. if you read about me, you know that i moved from rolla, mo…town of 13K…home of university of missouri rolla…land without a mall. the closest mall was in jefferson city, which was about 60 miles out. so, in my young years of 2 to 12, i didn’t really see a mall much other than maybe two or three times a year. you can imagine how grade double a awesome it was to move to cincinnati…specifically around where i lived…where there were two malls…TWO…malls…very close by.

why did i like the mall? well, first off, i liked the fact that it had an arcade. i got to know the arcade manager pretty well i used to go there so often. i also liked it because it had a book store and a software store and lots of fast, crappy junk food. one of my most vivid memories of the mall is the smell. you know what i’m talking about…the smell of super-processed salty food, department store clothing, chlorine from the large ‘water sculpture fountain’ and a twist of human b.o…. loved it.

and, sorry ma’…but i have to admit something here. remember all those times you and dad took me up to the mall to ‘meet my friends’? and i’d stay there for hours at a time hanging with ‘my friends?’ yeah…i lied. not about going to the mall or anything. no way. i loved the mall. the whole ‘meeting my friends’ thing was a lie. first off, i didn’t really have many friends. okay…in 7th and part of 8th grade, i was probably in the negative on the friends side of things. so, i had to do what i had to do to feel kind of normal, and get my goofy arse up to the mall where i could pretend like i was a popular kid and hang out with ‘my friends’. i’m not telling you to make you feel bad for me. i’m just giving you some idea of how much i liked the mall.

so i’d go and play in the arcade. then i’d go to the software store and check out all of the cool games that i couldn’t afford. and then i’d go to camelot music where, at that point, i’d look for pretty bad music. again…another vivid memory…me walking into camelot music and seeing, for the first time, a band called ‘queensryche’. from the look of the cover, i thought they were satanic. and i thought that they were actually called ‘queen-screech’.

i was afriad.

and so instead, i bought lou grahm (’and if heaven and earth collide tonight, we’ll be all alone in a different light…well i don’t care what the world can see…it’s just between you and me…you and me…’), or, at the suggestion of my 7th and 8th grade english teacher mrs. trybus, ‘mike and the mechanics’. or the new ’styx’ album.

i can’t believe i’m saying all of this outloud. but you’re at least chuckling, friends…

and then the book store. and then the arcade to burn up those last few tokens jingling around in my pocket. and THEN i’d grab some lunch…like some really shitty pizza from ‘luca’ pizza…and then i’d walk around. and then my mom or dad’d come pick me up and then it was back home for me where i’d recess into my bedroom and dream about the next time i’d get to go to the mall.

i even worked in the mall when i hit 16. my first job was at ‘central hardware’, but my second glorious job was at a place called ‘arthur treachers fish and chips’. and then ‘the great steak and potato company’. and then ‘waldensoftware’ and ‘j.c. penny’s’. i made some pretty strange friends there. there was donovan, and donovan actually ends up being a pretty awesome musician and someone i still talk to through my connection to the music scene in cincinnati. or patrick and brian (can’t remember their last names). those guys were some trouble, but really, really good guys. patrick was having trouble with his parents at one point, so he talked our manager at ‘great steak’ into letting him have the keys to just spend the night there. i made friends with this guy named brian who worked at another music store. brian had screamin’ long hair and looked like a vampire. his favorite band was ’saigon kick’ (he referred to them as ‘the kick’). i also met two good friends named kim and toni…and it was toni who would, much later in life, introduce me to my wife. there was travis…and travis worked at penny’s. travis would smuggle down sweat shirts and stuff in a box to ‘great steak’, and i’d trade him sandwiches and other stuff for them. or how about greg? he was the assistant manager at waldensoftware. we had kindred souls because we both had mullets. he was much older than me and had some kind of serious ADD, but he treated me really well. i was really proud of him when he and his wife adopted a kid. i remember how proud he was about that.

so…yeah…i guess i have to grudgingly admit that the mall holds a lot of fond memories for me.

i have to go back there because i never did find my shoes. i don’t like that prospect. but maybe this time i can go in there thinking about how much fun i used to have up there. maybe i can get myself worked into some kind of zen-like state and float around on my cloud of memories while i force my physical body to wade through all of that…odd, awkward energy that isn’t familiar anymore.

or maybe i’ll just get online and order some shoes off zappos.

yep. that’s what i’m going to do…

screw the mall.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 10:35 pm and is filed under General, Life, Cool thing of the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.