The Call of the Mall : COMMITMENTS : It has been your confidante, your guardian angel, your best friend. And without the shopping center by your side, you couldn’t have survived college, marriage and parenthood.
Back then, you despised malls. To a smart-aleck kid just out of college, they were vile monuments to corporate greed.
But you had a date and no clean clothes, so you swallowed your pride and headed for the Gap. Instead of rumpled, you managed to look a tad stylish. She loved the shirt.
Like a concerned parent, the mall was there for you; it gave and asked for nothing in return.
And as your courtship continued, you counted on the mall more and more. You bought her a book of poetry there and chocolates and a card to send for no reason . . . vowing all the while that someday you’d wander the hallowed aisles of Victoria’s Secret.
And like a good friend, the mall was your confidante and co-conspirator--a guardian angel making dreams come true.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The wonders of merchant capitalism now opened themselves to you in a spectacle of silk and lace. With love in torrid, breathless bloom, you squandered entire paychecks on teddies and seamed stockings. No catalogues for you. You did your lingerie shopping in the flesh--the shimmering satin riffling through your fingers; the exhilarating proximity of the changing rooms. You (you!!) loved shopping now.
But romance ran its course. And the mall takes no sides. She soon had a gift idea of her own.
Actually going inside the jewelers made you queasy. So you worked up to it--tentatively inspecting the window displays, craning your neck to read the deceptively dainty price tags. The big diamonds were just, well, garish. But the nice little ones had been cunningly arranged in oversized settings. And, you realized, an engagement band isn’t an ugly vase she could stick in a closet. She’d be wearing that microscopic diamond scrap on her hand till death do you part--and everyone would know who gave it to her. You hated shopping again.
Even more so when she hauled you off to Crate & Barrel to register. Instead of watching the biggest game of the year, you spent your Saturday in desperate arguments over pasta bowls, fish poachers, napkin rings and muffin tins. (Regardless of what the invitation said, this was your first day of marriage.)
Before you knew it, you were back at the mall, staring at your trembling rental-tuxed form in a fitting mirror, feeling much as you had at Magic Mountain before boarding the Cyclone. But like millions before you, you came through unscathed.
A year later, there was exciting news! The Mrs. was in the market for maternity clothes. And where else could you buy an entirely new wardrobe in one afternoon? (Do not pass Victoria’s Secret. Do not collect a silk teddy.)
The stroller glided smoothly over the polished tile floors; the stores’ entryways were generously wide. But you knew it would be so. The mall excludes no one in her endless bounty--and, as your family grew, new horizons of purchasing opened before you: Baby Gap for expensive outfits the kids outgrew on the ride home; the toy store for objectionably violent action figures.
In the blink of an eye, the kids were grown and going to the mall without you.
Now they’re off to college, where they’ll learn to sneer at malls and call them bourgeois. But you don’t mind. It gives you even more time to wander the climate-controlled halls hand-in-hand, watching the grand parade of life, cherishing all you’ve shared here through the years.
But, wait a moment. What’s that melody . . . coming from the piano and organ showroom? You’d passed by the lonely salesman so often. But today his tune catches your ear. You stop. Setting down your Hot Dog on a Stick, you gaze into her eyes and take her hand. And there, by the fountain, amid the potted philodendrons, you dance.
This is your mall, after all, and they’re playing your song: “As Time Goes By” . . . with a samba beat.
