Visiting the mall
A contemporary analysis of your painfully embarrassing experience
You make a visit to the shopping mall.
You don’t even know why you went there. You don’t have a family, you don’t have a Hyundai i10, you don’t even have 2 irritating-as-hell kids who want to make hourly trips to McDonald’s and wreck your net-worth with happy meal purchases. Thank God for that. But you still went to the mall. It’s okay, there’s nothing much to that…except maybe a crippling sense of existential boredom.
Anyway. You get out of the auto and walk towards the entrance, thankful that you reached here without a truck running over you and claiming insurance for wheel damage. As you approach the entrance, the entry line seems to get bigger and bigger until it almost resembles a marathon circuit. You wonder what’s happening. Maybe Mia Khalifa has come down to perform a striptease or something. There wouldn’t be so many unbathed youngsters crowding outside otherwise.
As you enter the line and get pushed around by a few people desperate to get in for the AC, you see the real reason why it’s so long. It’s the freaking vaccination check. Everyone’s whipping out a phone and flashing a picture of their friends’ vaccination report. It’s taking up a lot of time. Some open their phones to show the report but get distracted by hotties on Snapchat. Some people have forgotten their security pins because it was changed while finishing the Old Monk last night. Some people call their friends and ask them to send over their reports while standing in front of the security guard, who’s not sleeping for a change. They’re immediately caught and thrown out of the line and banned from entering the suburb ever again. Suits those nutjobs well, you think. And then call a friend for the report when you’re a kilometer away from reaching the entrance. Smart.
After a wait that seems to last longer than the last season of Money Heist, you finally get inside. What an exciting world it is! Brand names that you can’t pronounce, products that you can’t afford, cute women you can’t approach. Perfect. You look at a 3-year old near you and wish you could switch places with him. At least the world would seem a bit more approachable. And you could stare at the ladies with impunity. But your failed attempt at finding love is a story for another drunken day.
You’re anyway not here for that today. Actually, the purpose of the visit is not at all clear but the hope is that you’ll discover it over time. You stare with acute interest at the garments store and the superb shirts that can make you shine at work. For some reason, your post-tax salary figure suddenly flashes in your mind and all the rosy thoughts melt away. You’re going to have to repeat the same, overused shirt (after fixing the tear around the armpit region) on Monday.
Your eyes then veer towards a coffee shop that looks like quite the hip spot. Ah, maybe this is it. You’ve always imagined yourself to be a talented writer who, with the right coffee and ambiance, would be able to spit out ideas worth your own weight in gold. And that’s a lot, considering how you almost broke the weighing machine recently. Those intellectually seductive dreams float through your mind as an hour passes away in idle fantasies. And before you know, the place is already full. All the cool kids in town have populated the cafe to the brink. There’s no place left for a loser who doesn’t have his dad’s money to spend on a Nitro brew and a few keto oatmeal cookies. Another potential way to while away your time is now out of consideration.
Your eyes now wander to a luxury shop and you walk inside, despite the odd looks from some of the employees. It’s way beyond your paygrade but something catches your attention. It’s a really fancy bag and for some god-forsaken reason, you’re enamored by it. You can totally picture yourself gifting it to your diva girlfriend when you’re rich and happy and successful and no longer single at some point in time. While you’re in the middle of your hallucinations, a really attractive lady walks towards you. Your heartbeat goes up. Anticipation builds. Is this the moment? Has she seen through you and identified your unique and beautiful soul? It all seems like a dream when she actually comes, smiles, and opens her mouth to say something.
“Where can I see the Chanel bags?” she asks, and the house of cards shatters. The sound of her voice hits your eardrum like a death rattle. You get the hell out of there, lest more women mistake you for an employee at the store. That was a real embarrassment. You almost run away from that hideous place, vowing never to come back even if you get rich and successful, even though the probability of that scenario has more than a couple of zeros next to the decimal point.
Time passes. You slowly recover from the episode. On second thought, probably your probation review meeting was more humiliating. You ignore those thoughts and mindlessly go around, covering floor after floor. After walking around for what seems like a few gigayears, you ascend to the top. Not metaphorically- you literally get to the top floor and look around.
This visit to the mall has been a shocking experience so far. As if you weren’t already aware of your deficiencies, all of these shops and expensive products and women and rich kids have burned your self-esteem like a freaking flamethrower. What you need right now is a quick dose of comfort, a quick hit of dopamine that assures you that there’s more to life than feeling like a loser at the local mall.
That’s when you encounter the food court: a cornucopia of fast food outlets retailing shit that can destroy your small intestine faster than anything else in the galaxy. That’s nirvana. You rush with unabated enthusiasm and order up a pizza and a burger- the worst of both worlds. The decadence begins as you continue to pile up a bunch of dangerous items that you want to put into your body.
A few hours and three thousand calories later, you glide down the escalator: satisfied, smiling, and burping every 3 seconds. Time is of the essence and you make your way back home with a renewed sense of urgency to hit the toilet.
What a satisfying visit to the mall it has been. As they say, all’s well that ends well.