Mall Rats

NaBloPoMo Day 21: My parents arrived in Boston today -- three hours late due to slothful TSA screening in the City with Soul (half of the usual complement of screeners were MIA) that kept three planefuls of passengers from being able to board their flights on time. I'm sure the airlines were pleased to eat the cost of rebooking all those people.

My folks will be in Boston until Tuesday, then we'll drive to White Plains to visit my dad's side of the family, stuff our selves with turkey and dressing, and sally forth into the madness that is NYC on Black Friday. We have several hoity-toity excursions scheduled for the Beantown segment of my parents' visit, including the MFA and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but today was reserved for an American core (consumer) culture outing: direct from the airport to the Burlington Mall.

The shopping mission was completely selfish: I desperately needed better shoes, but I hate shopping and require the suasion of two strong women to get me into a shopping mall. I'm also very cheap. Even though I began to hate my Garmont shoes within a few weeks of buying them, I refused to spend any money to replace them until they virtually rotted off my feet, which happened this month. (My cheapness also extends to willingly indulging my mother's impulses to clothe and shoe me as an early Christmas gift.)

Though I dislike malls on principle, I have to say that this one is not so bad, even if its size is overwhelming -- I think the population of the greater Jackson metropolitan area could have parked their pickup trucks in the parking lot without causing any shortage of spaces. Chief among the mall's attractions is its Apple Store, which we unfortunately didn't have time to check out. Also high on that list is that the shoe stores are clustered together, so finding a decent pair of shoes (Ecco) that were comfortable enough for me and stylish enough to meet my wife's approval took barely half an hour, almost a personal best, as I am an irritable, miserly, and indecisive shopper. I also appreciated the relative dearth of unsupervised seedy-looking teenagers roaming the mallways. Mallrats may have spoken to my generation a decade and a half ago, but now I can't stand those people we once were.



Points of the story: No cultural events today; family follies begin in earnest tomorrow. Don't buy Garmont shoes -- they suck. Ecco shoes -- they seem comfy.

Further observation: NaBloPoMo has a downside -- pressed for time, I wrote about going to the mall, of all places. I'm embarrassed, but there's no time to remedy the situation today.