an hour in the mall

I went to the mall today for shoes. I rarely buy shoes, usually not until my toes are sticking out or the uppers are flapping free from the soles. My distaste for shoe-buying is one of the reasons I am not an ob-gyn -- but that's a whole different story.

Here are some disturbing things I noted during one hour in the mall.

1) Holy crap, the parking lot is crowded. It's eleven AM on a weekday in mid December -- who are all these people? Does no one work anymore?

2) Four school buses, from four different surrounding counties, are parked in the lot. Why are schoolchildren taking a fieldtrip to the mall? Is it for home ec class? Are they studying capitalism?

3) There are thousands of school-age kids at the mall, and I don't mean field-trippers. I saw eight-year-olds racing away from their mamas. I saw knots of teen queens on the prowl. I felt confused. Is today Saturday? Is school already out for Christmas? (It's only December 13, for God's sake.) Did the moms tell their tykes, "You're not going to school today, because I need you to come to the mall and tell me what electronic gadgets I should put under the tree for you this year." Are they all from Swiss boarding schools, enjoying a monthlong holiday before winter term? Are there that many well-heeled teenage dropouts in my nice middle-class city? I'm baffled. I don't get it. I give up.

4) A cluster of three beautiful trees, about fifteen feet tall, grace one of the auxilliary entrances of the mall. The leaves are almost all gone but the branches make a flawless silhouette -- perfectly shaped and perfectly grouped, like three old friends whispering to the sky. I recognized the trees as Japanese maples, probably of the bloodgood variety. As a person who spends far too much of her free time in garden stores and landscape outlets, I know how precious Japanese maples are. Elegant, slow-growing, and poetic in form, they are among the priciest of plants. A little one in a gallon pot can cost about a hundred dollars.

The ones at the mall must be fifty years old. They are priceless. They're works of art. They belong in a quiet garden or on a hillside, with a sweet breeze moving through their branches and a stream coursing at their feet. They deserve to enjoy fresh moonlight and the twitter of wild birds. There should be an old married couple, still in love, walking hand in hand beneath them on a winding gravel path. They deserve to thrive and be loved in a setting that honors them. I am utterly offended that the mall people used their millions to buy them up and trap them forever in this soulless place, between the parking lot and the east entrance to Dillard's.


That's it. I usually love malls, but not today. Even though I did get a pair of cheap black shoes, it hardly seemed worth the irritation.