A spin through the mall

The other day I entered an actual indoor shopping mall for the first time in years.

My brother and I share an avoidance of malls that we both believe stems from traumatic shopping trips we experienced as children. I know that sounds odd, but if you were eight years old and trapped in the ladies clothing section of a department store with our mother and with no possible means of escape, you'd understand how the scars have lingered into middle age.

My brother and I both love our mother. I know she's going to see these words and I don't want to hurt her feelings. For the record, she's a good person and she raised us well--but to this day neither of us will enter any kind of retail establishment with my mom for any reason.

But I was in a strange town with an hour to kill and a mall was right next to the place I was going, so I decided to see if anything had changed since the last time I visited one of these places.

The Waldenbooks at this mall was having a going out of business sale. To me, the only surprise was that Waldenbooks still existed in the first place. These days I buy most of my new books at a discount online at Amazon. I also buy a lot of cheap used books at the thrift store. When I do go to a physical bookstore these days it tends to be a big box bookstore with a big selection like Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million.

As much as I love the idea of independent bookstores, I rarely patronize them. The independents tend to be located in downtown locations, and I live and work in the burbs. Birmingham is supposed to have a wonderful independent bookstore, but I've never been to it and don't even know the name of the place. Shame on me.

The mall was filled with cell phone kiosks. There weren't nearly as many of those the last time I was inside a mall. I am amazed at how much of the advertising on television today is for cellular service providers. It wasn't that long ago when most people didn't own a cell phone, and now we can't live without them.

There were several jewelry stores catering to different income levels. I went to the "fancy" one and priced the Rolex watch I bought on a whim years ago. It's now worth $3,000 more than I paid for it, which makes it my single best investment over the last several years. Go figure.

I couldn't find a clothing store at the mall that wanted money from someone like me. The clothiers in this mall were all targeting customers who were either much hipper, skinnier, younger or of another ethnicity than me. I guess middle aged guys are stuck with Macy's and the other anchor stores if they want new threads.

The record store had become a music, DVD, video game and electronic accessories store since the last time I was in a mall. I wasn't surprised by that adaptation. What did surprise and disappoint me was the big selection of porn DVDs in an "adult" section of the store only a couple of rows away from the children's films.

I was delighted to see that Spencer's Gifts has become even more raunchy in the many years since I last entered one. The merchandise for sale at Spencer's has always revolved around the baser fantasies of hormonal eighteen year olds. I can't describe many of the things I saw for sale there in a blog intended for a general audience, but the most innocent items I saw for sale included a full range of "official beer pong" accessories and stripper poles.

I called Teri from Spencer's to describe some of what I couldn't quite believe I was seeing and had left me laughing out loud. When I reached her, she was inside our local Target store, so we were having simultaneous, but very different, shopping experiences.

I wouldn't describe my wife as a prude exactly, but, well, she kind of is. She would only allow me to describe one item before cutting me off, and I had to tell her the name of it twice. The combination of words coming from my mouth didn't register in her innocent brain as an actual tangible object the first time I said them. She was so unamused at her juvenile delinquent husband that she threatened to tell me about every single item within her eyesight at Target in retaliation, starting with each brand of laundry detergent and moving on to the air fresheners.

It was early evening and the offerings at the food court looked and smelled more enticing than I remembered, particularly a Japanese place. There were lines at most of the (what do you call the food places in a food court? restaurants? kiosks? food outlets?) stations. I resisted temptation.

I left the mall empty-handed with the hour successfuly killed and my curiosity satisfied.