Xmas isn't Christmas without trip to mall
“No, don’t turn here . . . you take the next left.”My wife was barking instructions from the passenger seat as I navigated our DGC (Dodge Grand Carivan [I’ve finally gotten over calling it the ‘Dork Wagon’ but I still detest the term ‘minivan’]) along Mall Road in East Knoxville, towards Knoxville Center.
“What was I thinking?” I mused as I navigated the DGC back into the line of traffic. “I just follow the train of cars.”
“Nobody likes a smart aleck,” she snapped.
Going to the mall on the last weekend before Christmas hadn’t been my idea. When she said we were going to take the kids (age 21 months) to have their picture made with Santa Claus, I protested vehemently against it.
“Santa Claus? They won’t even hardly go to their grandparents if it’s been more than three days since they last seen them. Do you really think they’re going to sit on the knee of a big man with a red suit and a beard and smile for the camera?
“Besides,” I added, “it’ll be crowded. I’ll put on my red pajamas and dig that old Halloween beard out of the closet and you can snap our picture in front of the Christmas tree.”
She gave me the look that makes married men universally know that it’s time to shut up and heed to instruction. And so I knew that it was time for me to face up to the situation: I was going to spend the opening weekend of late deer season battling about 800,000 other shoppers at the mall.
Eventually, I was able to convince myself that a trip to the mall wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Besides, Christmas isn’t Christmas without a trip to the mall . . . right?
Wrong. The problems started as we were stuck in traffic attempting to turn into the mall. If you can’t even get into the parking lot, it’s probably a pretty good sign that the stores inside are going to be crowded.
“Look at this traffic,” I whined. “Let’s just drive on down to Sam’s Club . . . look, there ain’t nobody going down there.”
Needless to say, I was fighting a losing battle. Fifteen minutes (and five circles around the parking lot at JC Penney) later, I was maneuvering the oversized double-stroller through the store, trying to avoid ramming the front of it into the Achilles heel of the persons in front of me while at the same time attempting to keep grubby hands emerging from either side of the stroller from grabbing clothing hanging from aisle displays.
“If I had a gun . . .” I grumbled after the third person cut me off.
“Would you shut up?” my wife hissed. “This isn’t the Oneida Wal-Mart. You can’t say things like that over here.”
I did recall that a shooting had taken place at the same mall just a week earlier and decided that it would, indeed, probably behoove me to keep my mouth shut.
As we emerged from Penneys, I looked longingly at the recliners on display in the corridor where the old men were camped out and relaxing, telling war stories while their wives maxed out credit cards in stores unknown deeper into the mall. I was already feeling weary, but those old men didn’t have two kids in a stroller to keep up with. One of which, I might add, had already chucked a cup of apple juice at the unfortunate shopper who happened to be in front of him at the time.
There’s something interesting about the mall at Christmas. All the shops have signs of the season on full display, and Christmas carols blast from every PA system. And, yet, it’s as if someone placed a large suction hose over the place to suck the holiday spirit out of the air. As I watched grumpy-faced shopper after grumpy-faced shopper heading for the exits, it occurred to me: It doesn’t matter how full of holiday cheer and how upbeat a person is, it isn’t going to last once they’ve battled for parking spaces outside the store, walking space inside the store, and jockeyed for position at the check-out registers. Rachael Ray could walk into that place and come back out as Ebenezer Scrooge.
There are plenty of comedic moments, however, if you can manage to find a spot along the periphery, away from the mad rush in the center aisle, and just spend some time observing people.
Take, for example, the obvious newly-wed who told his wife in a slightly raised voice as they were walking into Dillards, “Okay, but I’m telling you, this is the last store I’m going in today!”
I snickered, because I had said something similar to my wife just a few moments earlier, and I knew what was coming. Sure enough, the man got The Look and suddenly became very interested in the closest display of perfumes.
Or the two ladies who nearly resorted to physical force against one another when one unknowingly skipped line at the JC Penney check-out line.
“Can’t you see that sign where it says ‘line forms here’?” the first asked loudly. “You can take that sign and (use your imagination for the rest),” the second proclaimed.
Ah, yes, Christmas spirit abounds at the friendly neighborhood shopping mall.
But people-watching can only appease the impatient for so long (and can only appease toddlers an even shorter period of time), and I was suddenly reminded of what the late, great radio personality Garry Moore once said: “Christmas is, of course, the time to be home — in heart as well as body.”
Suddenly, home seemed like a good place to be.
