While I consider myself a shopper, very rarely do I go to the mall. I'm a bargain hunter so Old Navy, Marshall's, and Ross are my usual stomping grounds. Buying clothes that cost a lot are too much pressure for the attention span I don't have and I will spend a lot of time worrying that I won't wear something enough to get my money's worth. So I'd rather spend a few dollars on something that will only wash twice before it falls apart and be done with it.
Today was an emergency, though, because my daughter came home with a little slip of paper from her choir teacher yesterday that said:
CONCERT TOMORROW NIGHT!
Make sure you kids have black pants and white shirts!
Thanks for the heads-up, lady. As I type this I'm praying that the pants I bought my kid will fit otherwise she's going to be in her black yoga pants and I don't want to hear a word about it.
The mall has changed a lot from my younger days. They used to be dark, a little dingy, and the best place for us teenagers to practice our skulking skills. We'd wander around for hours, going into novelty shops like Spencer's that carried nothing that anyone on earth could possibly need and hit the music stores holding our extra large drinks from Taco Bell while we flipped through the selections for hours until we spent $1.00 on a single track.
These days the mall is brightly lit and sucks the very life out of you the moment you walk in the door. Seriously. It's like I can feel the moisture leave my body and I'm immediately dehydrated. About a half hour in, I find myself getting dizzy as I ride the escalator down so that I can begin the slow crawl toward daylight and fresh air.
Not only that, but the teenagers don't skulk because they're too busy texting and they're not carrying the Taco Bell cups of old, but rather large lattes from Starbucks.
It's amazing the false hope that the mall gives us. That our lives can be changed by color-blocking. That those boots will keep us warm and never mind that 5" heel - you'll be fine in the snow. That if we buy that Pottery Barn dining room set - marked down from $10,000 to $9,950 - our homes will be complete and our families will never say a cross word at dinner because they'll be sitting at that perfectly appointed table, complete with 3 table runners, a large basket of rustic pumpkins that cost $1000, and linen napkins that we will never use again.
For some reason today, I couldn't help but notice the bags that people were carrying and I wondered if they realized what it said about them. There was an older gentleman in his 60s carrying an Abercrombie & Fitch bag who looked like he might be gearing up for a later-in-life round of dating and was trying to look as young as possible. I thought about drawing his attention to the woman who was carrying the Anne Taylor bag, but most women who can fit into those clothes are a B cup or less and he might be looking for more.
And then there was me - walking around with a bag from Bath & Body Works because the soap I bought today was the only thing that fit.
When I go to the mall, it's usually the department stores that I go into. I start from the bottom and work my way up. JC Penney's is doing a facelift and I'm a little confused by their new identity but I'm willing to give anything a try. I'm not sure why I go into Dillard's anymore because most of what I find there I think I'll be more comfortable in when I'm 80. Macy's will work in a pinch for the bargain hunter in me and if I'm wearing my nice jeans...I'll go into Nordstrom.
I don't know how they do it, but when you walk into Nordstrom, you just look more put together. Somehow everyone looks perfectly mismatched and carefully uncoordinated and I just know that if I saw the same woman walking around TJMaxx...she wouldn't look as good to me.
I've also spent more at Nordstrom than I do anywhere else and I don't know why. For some reason, I'll feel compelled to buy a shirt on the sale rack there that still costs $70 even though I wouldn't give it a second thought at Macy's. There is something about seeing an article of clothing marked down 33% at Nordstrom that makes me think I'm getting a great deal.
That is, until I get home and think, "Wait. What did I just buy?"
The truth is, I feel my age every time I go to the mall. I'm reminded of my very wise grandmother who, when asked if she wanted to go shopping, replied, "Why? I've already seen everything."
And even though she said that at 90, I'm thinking it at 36. I feel like I've seen every pair of shoes that someone could possibly invent. I've been around long enough to see trends go and come back again. And I'm old enough now to know that the perfect shirt won't fix a bad day and that another pair of black pants are probably no better than the 10 I already have in my closet.
But there's still a part of me that's foolish enough to try.
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