So I went in and was confronted with a wilderness of trendy jeans, slacks, exercise pants, sweatpants, flannel boxer shorts, bicycle shorts in eye-popping day-glo colors... and that's only one item. Believe me there were lots of other categories of clothing, from the designer night wear to the prom attire to the casual office day clothing to the power suits for men and the flirty vulnerability dresses for women, not to mention what every yuppie wears for tennis and golf and parties and sailing. Hollow-eyed store dummies with impossibly perfect hair and figures stared at me as I walked past, trying to get me to admire their attire.
I turned a corner and another and another, seeking that one item for my son's birthday. Of course clothing is only one of a myriad of choices that confronts today's consumer. You got your towels and bathroom fixtures, your kitchen towels and matching bowls, your curtains and your carpets and your sofa and your pillows and your quilts... of course this is just one store I'm talking about, JC Dollars or Pee Jay Dennys or something, and there's virtually hundreds of stores for your every need. They got everything from stereos to wedding gifts, to sports equipment to video games to designer pets in cages... and I just walked around and around and around, hypnotized by all of this wonderful wealth of sound and color and flash and affluence, till the eyeballs just about popped out of my head. I couldn't possibly think straight or make any decisions-- I was as weak as putty in the hands of the advertising moguls or whoever was responsible for this place. And bear in mind that this was only ONE mall; right down the road was ANOTHER mall just like this one, and up the road several more malls of various sizes and stand-alone Big Box stores...
And when you get home (if you ever do) they've got still more big, colorful things to make you look at and want, when you turn on your TV or look on your computer (shop on the web!) or open your mail (free money-saving coupons!). Tell you the truth, I don't know how anyone manages to think straight with all these choices dangled in front of them, day in, day out. Matter of fact, I don't think anyone DOES think straight.
But to get on with my story, there I was wandering around & around & around. I sort of forgot what I had come for and just wandered, letting the day glo & the neon sink right into my brain. I guess I thought about trying to get out of the mall, but damned if I hadn't absolutely forgotten how to find the exit. I wandered in & out of Shug's Candy Store and Cash's Wedding Bands & Doom Records, the Nihilistic Teen and THE MWHMTE (Man who has more than everything) Gift store & the Nature Store (you CAN buy Nature, too, you know. "Buy a Rainstick hand-painted by the last surviving Penan Natives right before their homeland was destroyed by Mitsubishi logging machines!")
Back to Jay Cee Pennies where I found my nose smack in the middle of a lacy designer bikini in fuscia & silver. I bounced off the size 2 pencil-thin clothing for anorexic teenagers in my vain search for an exit sign. My bleary eyes fixed on a crowd of gorgeous young women standing around looking as if they had nothing to do.
"Excuse me," I asked one of them,'"how do I get out of here?"
They all just continued to stare, frozen in their poses of glamourous, flirtatious cool like some race of goddesses. With my last remaining brain cell I realized that they were store dummies. Geez! How did they get them to look so lifelike? That bored expression, those vapid eyes... was it some new genetic engineering technique? Take real people and transform them into dummies? Take plastic & vinyl & implant some computer chip and transform it into a real virtual life form?
I staggered away, bumped into a lawn chair, ricocheted off a bathroom fixture. "Attention all shoppers, this mall is closing in 5 minutes, please complete your purchases and leave," a voice announced, but I couldn't understand the message. As I wandered around in a stupor, the lights dimmed and I heard a sound like keys jingling and another sound like a metal gate slamming. Awhile later I blundered into the gate itself, a barred gate just like in prison. I was doomed--a prisoner condemned to spend eternity in the Mall!
I abandoned hope and fell headlong onto a plush couch by Martha Steward & knew no more.
That's how I got trapped in the mall. I became an empty shell.How long was I there? Beats hell outta me. This was Mall Time, without sunlight or weather or day or night... an eternity of bright crowded emptiness, like life in a spaceship. The other shoppers walked right past and I couldn't say or do a thing. The Mall had stolen my soul. I think I had become a store dummy. Now I knew where store dummies came from! It was a spell of some sort. I don't know how much time passed. I forgot who I was. I was bewitched all right. Perhaps I'd have been there forever, except for a lucky occurrence.
A couple of girls strolled past. "Help," I tried to call out to them. I think I must have succeeded in making a little noise because they all turned and looked at me. They were little 12-year olds, the kind who think they're the coolest thing on earth and that being cool depends totally on putting someone else down.
"Lookit that dummy on that couch," says one to the others.
"Ewww, her clothes are so crappy." Girl Two cracks her chewing gum.
"Her hair's a mess." Girl Three rakes her exquisite fingernails through her silky hair.
"And she looks OLD," says the first one, the most damning critique of all. "Why would they have a model that's OLD?"
"I don't think she's a model at all," says Girl Two, wrinkling her cute little nose. "I think she's some bag lady who wandered in."
The words thrilled me. SOME BAG LADY!! That's who I was! I didnt' belong here at all. I wasn't part of this glamorous, trendy, plastic world. I was a real person!
Memories came flooding back. I remembered who I was, how I'd gotten here! I was "old"! Old enough to be a mother. Old enough to have had a real life with more in it than makeup and fashions. The spell was broken.
I got up, a bit stiff, stretched my real live bones & muscles. What a relief to remember that I'm a real person--not a genetically engineered dummy created to sell things.
I got out of there as quick as I could, and I never went back. And I advise you not to go either. There's Sales Managers there just waiting to suck out your soul and make you into a dummy. Believe me, they'd like to make the whole world into a giant mall, with all of us as the dummies.
Next time my kid needs a present, I'll make him something myself.