Charlie Hatton About This
About Me
Email Me

Bookmark
 FeedBurnerEmailTwitterFacebookAmazon
Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA



All Quotes
Site Search:
HomeAboutArchiveBestShopEmail

« Eek!Cards #19: Call Now -- Or Preferably, Never! | Main | Eek!Cards #20: With Six You Get Calico »

Crawl Through the Mall

My new-as-of-January job is in an office building in Cambridge, just a quick jog over the bridge from Boston.

(Or a short swim under it, I guess, if you're the backstroking type.

Me, I'd stay out of the Charles River. That thing used to be like the Futurama sewers. And I don't need any grossly mutated fish wriggling their way into my trunks, thanks. When there's a chance of "shrinkage", fourteen eyes are way worse than none.)

Also close by the office is a shopping mall and underground garage, where the company has graciously provided me a pass for parking.

The only way out of this garage is through the mall, which is an interesting experience for me. I've spent most of my adult life avoiding shopping malls like the plague. When I absolutely, positively have to go to a mall -- on Christmas Eve, say, or an hour before an anniversary dinner reservation with the missus -- I do my own rendition of the Hokey Shoppy Pokey:

You get the hell in.
You get the hell out.
You buy a card or some gadget,
And you don't mess the hell about.

There's nothing about malls I enjoy. They're crowded. They're loud. There's Muzak and children and kiosks full of schlocky crap I don't really want to know existed, much less want to buy.

"I'm willing to 'window shop' in exactly two places: the Harvey Vinyl Double-Glass Home Emporium, and the Red Light District in Amsterdam."

(Seriously? "Kiss Me, I'm Albanian" in silver glitter on a halter top? Since when are Eastern European prostitutes moving to New Jersey and shopping in Massachusetts?)

What's more, I don't especially like buying things. And I absolutely don't like "shopping" for things -- which, according to my wife, involves a lot of looking and walking around and trying things on and fondling various bits of merchandise without necessarily making any purchases. That does zero for me. I'm willing to "window shop" in exactly two places: the Harvey Vinyl Double-Glass Home Emporium, and the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Other than that, sayonara, shoppers.

So this parking-in-a-mall thing is a little slice of weekdaily hell for me. It's not so unbearable in the morning -- I'm generally there before the mall opens, so the only buzzing throng of goofballs is packed into the Starbucks. The suits descend on the joint and screech at each other like it was some kind of Armani birdfeeder. But it's just one shop. I try to distract myself with sexy mannequins until I'm safely by.

(Which doesn't always work. The problem with sexy mannequins before opening hours is that they're often being rearranged, stripped down, disassembled or otherwise uncombobulated. There are clothes and parts and torsos all over.

I can stretch a little in my inner fantasy world. But Victoria's Secret: SVU is going too far. Stupid malls.)

The evenings are the real gauntlets, of course. I usually leave the office between six and eight pm -- prime shoppah time for the suburbanite crowd. And their kids. And the teens. And the old folks. And, apparently, the glitter-loving Albanian barely-legal tramp stamp crowd. Who knew they existed? The mall knew; that's who.

I assumed that navigating the hordes of zombie-eyed consumers would be the low point of getting back to my car. But no. There's also the crippling social rejection. That's a nice little end-of-the-day bonus. Like a mint on a hotel pillow. Or a nighty-night kick in the nuts.

The ostracism comes courtesy of a particular dead-eyed overmade girl who works one of the kiosks on the main floor. I pass her every day as she scans the throngs of passersby for victims. She wields some sort of skin care cream or paste or gravy -- I've never gotten a good look at it, but I'll sometimes see her slathering it onto some man's or woman's cheek as she coos in a soft accent about hydrolyzing moisturizers and essential oils.

Once, I got close enough to glimpse the tag on her collar. Her name was 'Matilda'.

Or maybe it was 'Magda'. 'Margalena'? 'Muffelata'? I don't know. Something vaguely exotic and fitting her over-glammed persona.

(Come to think of it, maybe she's the one buying those glitter tops. Frankly, it would explain an awful lot.)

And the reason I've never seen or heard myself about the product she hawks? Because fancy Matilda won't even look at me.

Actually, that's not technically true. She's never looked me in the eye. But she's seen some part of me. Her customer-dar seems to pick prospective slatherees up by their shoes, or maybe their knees. Some people, she'll look them the rest of the way up, unleash her blinding teeth, and offer sweetly to cream their face.

(The first face creaming is always on the house, of course. That's how they get you.)

With me, she never reaches the face. I'll watch her start to look me up, and then she stops. Maybe she doesn't like the look of my belt, or the angle of my knees, or my shirt's not tucked in enough to be "cream-worthy". Whatever it is, she'll blink, turn her head, and scout out the next walker down the line.

And let's be clear. I'm not interested in being glopped with Matilda's anti-aging cheek gravy, or whatever the hell it is. I'm quite content to wrinkle and pucker at a steadily accelerating pace, until I resemble the prunypussed Mister Magoo befitting my advanced age.

I'm just saying -- it would be nice to be asked. Just once. Then I can go back to bring the ugly-kneed ghetto-belt untucked heathen clearly not worth slathering beauty product onto. But every once in a while, even a guy like me would like to feel creamworthy.

Is that so much to ask, glittery Matilda? Slink that tube of goop over my way, lady. I promise not to take it. Let's just go through the motions, at least once. We need something. Otherwise, we're just hanging in a mall. Seriously, a mall. Jeez.





Permalink | Comments (0)


, ,



Post a comment

HomeAboutArchiveBestShopEmail © 2003-15 Charlie Hatton All Rights Reserved
Highlights
Me on Science:
  Secondhand SCIENCE


Me on ZuG (RIP):
  Zolton's FB Pranks
  Zolton Does Amazon


Me on Baseball:
  Bugs & Cranks


Me on Apartments:
  Author Page


Three Wee Tweets:
Favorite Posts:
30 Facts: Alton Brown
A Commute Dreary
A Hallmark Moment
Blue's Clues Explained
Eight Your 5-Hole?
El Classo de Espanol
Good News for Goofballs
Grammar, Charlie-Style
Grammar, Revisitated
How I Feel About Hippos
How I Feel About Pinatas
How I Feel About Pirates
Life Is Like...
Life Is Also Like...
Smartass 101
Twelve Simple Rules
Unreal Reality Shows
V-Day for Dummies
Wheel of Misfortune
Zolton, Interview Demon

Me, Elsewhere

Features
Standup Comedy Clips

Selected Clips:
  09/10/05: Com. Studio
  04/30/05: Goodfellaz
  04/09/05: Com. Studio
  01/28/05: Com. Studio
  12/11/04: Emerald Isle
  09/06/04: Connection

Boston Comedy Clubs

 My 100 Things Posts

Selected Things:
  #6: My Stitches
  #7: My Name
  #11: My Spelling Bee
  #35: My Spring Break
  #36: My Skydives
  #53: My Memory
  #55: My Quote
  #78: My Pencil
  #91: My Family
  #100: My Poor Knee

More Features:

List of Lists
33 Faces of Me
Cliche-O-Matic
Punchline Fever
Simpsons Quotes
Quantum Terminology

Favorites
Banterist
...Bleeding Obvious
By Ken Levine
Defective Yeti
DeJENNerate
Divorced Dad of Two
Gallivanting Monkey
Junk Drawer
Life... Weirder
Little. Red. Boat.
Mighty Geek
Mitchieville
PCPPP
Scaryduck
Scott's Tip of the Day
Something Authorly
TGNP
Unlikely Explanations

Archives
Full Archive

Category Archives:

(Stupid) Computers (70)
A Doofus Is Me (203)
Articles 'n' Zines (74)
Audience Participation (35)
Awkward Conversations (176)
Bits About Blogging (168)
Bitter Old Man Rants (50)
Blasts from My Past (78)
Cars 'n' Drivers (60)
Dog Drivel (78)
Eek!Cards (267)
Foodstuff Fluff (116)
Fun with Words! (71)
Googlicious! (27)
Grooming Gaffes (88)
Just Life (238)
Loopy Lists (33)
Making Fun of Jerks (59)
Marketing Weenies (66)
Married and a Moron (185)
Miscellaneous Nonsense (62)
Potty Talk / Yes, I'm a Pig (84)
Sleep, and Lack Thereof (34)
TV & Movies & Games, O My! (101)
Tales from the Stage (74)
Tasty Beverages (29)
The Happy Homeowner (81)
Vacations 'n' Holidays (134)
Weird for the Sake of Weird (71)
Whither the Weather (40)
Wicked Pissah Bahstan (49)
Wide World o' Sports (124)
Work, Work, Work (206)

Heroes
Alas Smith and Jones
Berkeley Breathed
Bill Hicks
Dave Barry
Dexter's Laboratory
Douglas Adams
Evening at the Improv
Fawlty Towers
George Alec Effinger
Grover
Jake Johannsen
Married... With Children
Monty Python
Nick Bakay
Peter King
Ren and Stimpy
Rob Neyer
Sluggy Freelance
The Simpsons
The State

Plugs, Shameless
Alltop, confirmation that I kick ass

TopOfBlogs

HumorSource

Blogging Fusion Blog Directory

bloglovin

Listed on BlogShares

Top Blogs

 

Feeds and More
Subscribe via FeedBurner

[Subscribe]

RDF
RSS 2.0
Atom
Credits
Site Hosting:
Solid Solutions

Powered by:
MovableType

Title Banner Photo:
Shirley Harshenin

Creative Commons License
  This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License

Mint Installation

Performancing Metrics

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

Valid XHTML 1.0

Valid CSS!

© 2003-15 Charlie Hatton
All Rights Reserved