Susan's Scribblings the Blog

I have offered some random thought blog posts in the past. Here is a list of some of the latest. See what you think about them.

-For the fourth time in about ten years, I’ve gotten metal embedded in my tire. Our streets used to be free of such nuisances, but it seems that metal objects are on the loose out there. To my way of thinking, this could happen in only a few different ways: one is that construction vehicles and job sites, and the people working at them, inadvertently bring loose metal away with them, either rolling and sliding about their pickups’ beds or left by accident on any flat surface, and they’re forgotten. Workers may have nails in their pockets which can fall out. This is something which should be checked before leaving the work site. It might also be helpful if our municipal vehicles contained some type of magnetic device which could be used to pick up loose metal from the streets. I know that some construction jobs utilize a roller magnet to pick up debris, such as after installing roofing or siding. A thinner version could be mounted on the front of a truck or van much like a snow plow and simply be kept close enough to the ground to do the work. I’ll leave the invention of such an item to the pros.

-It’s a general consensus that something which is created should also have a method of being destroyed. Normally this duty falls to the creator of the thing. So why aren’t we holding the plastics industry responsible for coming up with ways to eliminate the growing mountain of waste which will soon overwhelm us all, including their own future generations? Politicians are not scientists, after all. The inventors of plastic may go down in history as blameless nihilists who ruined Earth if they don’t take up the task and start doing something. The next time I throw out a container, I want to know it will be part of a wall for a temporary shelter when storm damage levels entire villages. I want to see laundry detergent bottles being refilled at the grocer via large tanks provided by the manufacturers; a QR or barcode would determine the amount of liquid to fill the bottle, and multiple refills, at reduced cost, are possible. A second Earth is not possible.

-I’m waiting to see which side will win the water wars: the “I’ll put water in an insulated bottle” people or the “I’ll buy a case and bring a bottle with me.” I don’t know how people survived without constantly carrying water with them all these years. And now you need to add flavor because water tastes like. . .well, water. Oh yeah, that’s right: we had water fountains, often in public parks with plaques of dedication on them, and offices had water coolers and cone-shaped paper cups. We didn’t gulp 32 ounces, and we were still a healthy generation. When did that change?

-America is ranked last in many aspects of education. This means we’re cranking out young citizens who actually know nothing. They can’t make change, read an analog clock or understand package directions. They don’t know who fought in the Civil War (the North/Union and South/Confederacy); even Black Americans aren’t learning this, which is flummoxing. Our teachers don’t make enough money to support their own children. Parents are fighting the system and actually advocating for just pushing those kids who fall behind through the system for the sake of vanity. Our school system should be year-round (with breaks in winter and summer and holidays, of course), should not simply mass promote anybody, and include remediation and alternative paths to learning, so that every child has learned the most they can from twelve years to find productive futures in society.

-I haven’t gone to Target in a while, because over the summer a store near me fired an employee who tried to get some bike-riding kids out of the store and was assaulted. If a good deed is punished, and bad deed-doers are not, I can’t support a place that practices such backward philosophy.

-I ordered a house number from the “sells everything website.” You know the one. I thought I was buying a single number, because the other numbers I had bought at deep discount were cleared out at the local hardware store and I was just missing the fourth. Heck, some numbers are more common and go out of stock faster, meaning the availability and price goes up, right? The quantity said just one, but had I clicked on the “More” carat, I would have seen that it was one set of five. Anybody want some numbers?

-It was announced on social media that meatloaf will be going out of favor and probably won’t be seen at restaurants in the future, along with ambrosia salad and baked Alaska. Meatloaf is one of those polarizing foods which you either enjoy because you like the way it’s prepared, or loathed because you prefer your ground meats in buns with fries. My mother made a great meatloaf using onions, eggs, bread crumbs, and tomato sauce on top. That loaf went into Sunday dinner, then leftovers and at least one sandwich between two slices of bread with horseradish. I never had either of the desserts, but I will make meatloaf until I can no longer cook.

-The weather is changing, and with it, the pajama wars are on. This week it may be heavy long sleeves, and next week it’s shorts and tank tops. So do we call this Indian Summer or early Autumn? Whatever it is, it’s hard to get good sleep when you sweat one night and freeze the next. The prepared sleeper carries two types of bedding and changes them as the need arises. I did find a nice cooling blanket that really works, and the warm quilts are on standby. Mother Nature, let me know when you break out your parka.

I’ll show myself out and take the soapbox with me.

Emotions have been extremely fragile these past few years, mostly due to our endurance of endless isolation, adaptation to new norms and having to deal with the bombardment of misinformation and mental noise from the media. If we could go back to the days of the great philosophers, we might experience some true common sense.

The world seems to have become one big junior high school locker room experience. Everybody seems to enjoy throwing insults at the “other guys,” with a variety of creative negative monikers thrown in among the half-truths and hearsay. When the second party doesn’t fight back, they’re called cowards. That’s one of the problems with hurtful language, when you’re judged not by whether the accusations mean anything or are remotely true, but by whether you have a better comeback.

I wasn’t much for comebacks when I was hurt or insulted in high school, which was a lot. I had acne, which was treated like bubonic plague. I also preferred to smile, which many took as a challenge to beat me into subdued misery. I was despised for knowing the answer, ridiculed for being on top of the day’s events, and dismissed because I managed to find a comfort zone of dress style which walked a line between fashionable and respectable. Sometimes, decades after school ended, I can still see clearly in my memory the images of some of my tormentors as they came up with the top insults which live on a chart, like a Top 40 of hurtful phrases, rent free in my head, probably for life.

One of my social media friends has been in and out of the “broken rules penitentiary” several times for being naughty with many posts, but a recent entry he posted actually did me a world of good, and I managed to shrug off the burden of those long-ago insults.

It was a brief post about Socrates.

The famous Western philosopher and teacher (circa 470-399 BC) did not write anything down himself, but his followers recorded much of his teachings. His ideas are relevant now, and we could learn a thing or two from him. He didn’t teach in schools or wear the latest fashions: the people then wore togas. They did, however, write about simple ideas in life, and some of it has made its way to social media.

In this particular entry, somebody in Athens was insulting Socrates, who merely smiled and did not engage the person. An aristocrat asked him why he tolerated such insults, and Socrates lead him to a warehouse where he located a ragged cloak, offered it and told the aristocrat that it suited him. The man was confused and wondered if the great philosopher was mad to offer such a filthy garment. Socrates told the aristocrat that just as he would not wear the cloak, so he himself would not wear the insults because they did not suit him. He posed the question, “When someone gives you something you don’t want, and you don’t accept it, who owns the rejected gift? Being sad and angry at the insults of others is like agreeing to wear the rags they throw away.”

Is anybody worthy of insults, such as the store clerk being berated by a Karen who unloads their negativity onto others to bear? Is anybody more or less human than somebody else? Do insults matter?

When you examine what this world truly is, you realize that we are all “somebody else.” We all matter.

Also, as Socrates said, our greatest gift is the knowledge that we actually know nothing. Somebody who insults us knows nothing about whom they are insulting. It does not suit the recipient, then, to be affected in any way by it. When we master our emotions, we don’t project anything onto others in a negative way. Our calm can project calm, in turn, in a positive way. We can smile and walk away, and the insult means nothing. It belongs to nobody.

After reading this worthy post from a (I hope) reformed social media acquaintance, I managed to take a cleansing breath and shake away decades of insults living on my consciousness like cobwebs. They don’t suit me. The persons who said them knew nothing.

I do know that this simple way of looking at life is worth our attention, especially today. If we go beyond the noise of the media, the banter of politicians and the permissiveness of misinformation, we can get back to the basics of life. We could all be like Socrates.

Just without the togas.

I have gone through a good half dozen cell phones in my lifetime; my first came in 2000 and was about as useful as a fridge in the Arctic tundra. Over the years my phone has gotten better and smarter. As in smarter than its owner. Which is rather scary.

Phones used to come with a complete, detailed instruction manual, charging hardware and a year’s supply of headache remedy. Back then, one would become acclimated to the basics of the phone and go to the manual when something difficult came up, as in how to make the darned thing ring louder, how to tell all the junk notifications to go jump in the lake, or how to make the battery last more than twenty minutes.

More on that later.

My old reliable phone, which turned six this year, finally became not only outdated, but incapable of supporting software I needed for work. I received sympathetic support from the IT team, but the truth was that I needed a new phone just to get updated software. Being familiar with computers going obsolete from the past, I sighed and began searching for my new ball and chain.

The website pointed me to an authorized retailer some forty minutes from home, which was odd because I have at least four of them within a quarter hour from me. Further drilling down the rabbit hole of “availability near you” produced a hit at one of my favorite locations, so I jumped into the car and went there brimming with hope.

When I arrived, I spoke to a pleasant team member who proceeded to tell me that the model phone I wanted actually was not in stock there. Naturally my next question was where else it might be in stock, and this is where the issues plaguing today’s life became real: for security purposes, the employees were forbidden to tell customers whether an item was in stock. This is an effort to discourage declaring open season for potential malcontents and Karens who might pay a visit to the store to wreak havoc. I was informed, however, that the store to which he was sending me was their definition of a full-service location, so they would be most likely to have something for me.

Suddenly I had visions of the small and larger K-Mart stores dancing in my memory; the smaller places might lack certain perks like an auto shop, while the larger ones were easier to get lost in. I made a turn down an aisle once and found the entrance to the auto shop; I had been looking for the garden center.

But I digress.

Off to the second location–which was closer to home by miles–I drove. Yes, the new pleasant team member said, he can get that model from the back. Off he went, and came back later with what I can best describe as a Tiffany style presentation of my new phone, which came in a large, roomy box about twice its actual size, and with a case and screen protection brought over to seal the bargain.

Everything seemed ready to go until we got to the plan I was on. My plan was eligible for the phone, but not the phones they had in the store. This is where I became the subject of the “locked phone blues.” A locked device is apparently limited to certain plans. The team member then directed me to go across the street to the shopping center and buy an unlocked version of the phone from the big blue and yellow retail guys, then bring the purchase to them to have the phones switched over.

Going to the familiar retailer, I received my new unlocked phone, in a generic tight fitting white box. Proof again that the price of freedom from restriction can sometimes be drained of joy as well. Little matter; as long as it was a new device and did what I needed, that was more important.

I took the old and new devices back to the cellular retailer, and my third pleasant team member spent nearly half an hour–part of the time hampered by French tips which make touch screens and tiny access port holes unnavigable–transferring the data from Old Reliable to the newbie device. When it was finished, I also received advice on how to wipe the old phone and dispose of it (not there). I packed everything into my handy expandable tote (plastic bags are banned in my region, so it’s bring your own) and went home.

That was when I found out that my device comes with a charging cable, but no adaptor and only a quick start-up guide. No manual. And no headache remedies.

Fortunately I found that my tablet enables me to charge the phone with the cable, so I spent the evening engaged in social media with an extra cord winding its way from the output port to my new phone, while I ordered an adaptor from the big blue and yellow retail guys to pick up on a second trip.

In all it took me five stops, two days and a few hundred dollars to put things right. The end result is that my new phone updated the work related software, and it has a charge that has lasted longer than before.

This phone better last me another six years.

Back in the days when cartoons were simpler and yet still funny, a common trope when making fun of the entertainment industry included when a character would call for makeup; somebody would appear with a gigantic powder puff and smack it upon the individual’s face, with a cloud of billowing white resulting from the assault.

It’s been ages since I’ve seen a powder puff in the cosmetics aisle.

Today’s selection of tinted coverage is immense, taking up a full wall at the local pharmacy. The lineup of the popular names–Revlon, Maybelline, Covergirl, MAC, e.l.f., L’Oréal–draw the eyes and drain the wallet with a variety of designs stamped into powders, bottles brimming with every skin tint on the planet, lip options of soft colorful columns or hard shaded sticks, all designed to produce a desired look.

The shopping list for a store cosmetics run is mindboggling. Foundation comes in powder, liquid or paste, and requires an applicator which looks like somebody dismantled the tips of a kids’ foam bow-and-arrow playset. Concealer must also accompany the foundation to hide flaws. Blush also comes in powder or cream with its own applicator. The eyes require mascara thick enough to transfer onto a paint canvas with one blink, liner to make sure people know where your eyeballs are in relation to the rest of you, and shadows in palettes that resemble a psychedelic fever dream.

Apparently no woman should be without her makeup face in public, and it requires the skill of an artist to apply it well. One must follow the planes of the face (or determine where they should be when absent) and use the correct product to conceal, beautify or illuminate the area to the proper degree.

If you’re unsure of how to begin this process for yourself, simply watch any dramatic social media video. It has seemingly become a requirement for those creating content to do a bonus makeup application video at the same time.

I don’t understand how it suddenly became necessary to discuss a breakup with a cheating boyfriend while outlining one’s eyebrows (I did exclude that from the list earlier) and dabbing foundation with the arrow tip foam applicator previously mentioned. Unfortunately I cannot guarantee that watching these videos will help you with your face type, nor will it recommend what products to buy.

These videos are seemingly designed to give the posting person something to do with their hands while revealing how they found out about the cheating boyfriend. Usually it’s by employing private detective work and receiving intel from similarly well-tinted friends. And they still managed to look good doing it.

I don’t find the makeup techniques empowering, and I’m sure that if men watch them, they are either put off by how much work is involved or appalled by how much women hide beneath the layers of stuff. Whatever purpose it serves doesn’t seem worth the effort.

The most interesting makeup videos I’ve seen on social media are done by drag queens. I’m sure I’ll catch flak for saying so, but a woman can only enhance her looks so much, but when you take an ordinary male and transform them into a female so stunning that no actual female could accomplish it, that’s what I call Hollywood style.

And they don’t use powder puffs, either.

I’m at the age at which trying to enjoy foods can be hazardous to my health. The days of reckless candy consumption, cake and ice cream, or even a snack-sized candy bar, seem to be behind me. Not that I’m a big consumer of junk food; the past three years in particular have been nothing compared to what my eating life used to be.

Before the office closed and we started working from home, food was everywhere I looked. People brought in donuts (or the boss told me to order them), and the cafeteria was bustling with folks devouring eggs and bacon or the oatmeal of the day. Lunch was a choice of dinner entrée or a platter with a sandwich and a side of fries or onion rings. The vending machines stayed busy at all other hours.

Those are all rarities on my daily menu now. Except for the oatmeal. I have that daily in autumn and winter. I haven’t eaten bacon as a breakfast food in ages, although I have found a flaccid slab or two in the occasional burger.

I broke down and decided to try a delivery service, so five days a week I prepare a two-minute meal in the microwave which is supposed to be healthier and portion controlled. The meals arrive once a week in an ice-packed box, and I simply move them to the fridge and take one out at dinnertime.

The meals are tasty, hot and filling, plus I have not found any I don’t like. This either means that I have a tolerant palate for anything, or I don’t know good food when I taste it.

I’ve never outright refused to eat a meal. Okay, one time the omelet my mother prepared was a bit on the softer side for my taste, and she was rather annoyed that I asked her to give it more of a cook, but it was just that one time. Even the Navy always met my expectations on omelets. I guess this means I used up my one complaint about food allotted me per lifespan.

I wish those Karens I see on social media videos would realize they earn one complaint about food preparation per lifespan.

Unfortunately, I had some blood work done at the lab, and the results came back that I still have too much sugar in my system. Gee whiz, I already gave up sugar in my tea, switched out several items for alternates with real and low percentages of sugar, and my summer cereal boxes all come with ten grams or less of sweet stuff.

My doctor will probably tell me to limit dessert.

Wait until I tell him what that will do to my daily life as I know it. I may need therapy.

Another recommendation may be to change the diet plan for my deliveries, to something like the DASH or Mediterranean diets. Both are known to help older people get better numbers out of their blood samples. They’re also rather restrictive and a bit pricey. because anything good for you naturally costs more. My current service is reasonably priced, but I may need to spend more for healthier choices.

Despite eating two bananas and a Greek yogurt a day, my potassium was still low. That’s not easy to build up, but not impossible. Unfortunately, foods such as spinach don’t come in meal delivery services, and watermelon doesn’t travel well. I added a salmon dinner to the delivery service to help boost my numbers.

Snacking has been out of the question, so I don’t have chips, pretzels or popcorn at home, though I indulged in a bag of chocolate drizzle popcorn last month (I stretched it out to last all week).

Here’s the kicker: the sugars you consume stay in your bloodstream and can be read with a simple test to find out what you’ve been doing for the past ninety days. That was vacation time, so yes I did have a few indulgences such as fudge from the boardwalk. And my blood told on me.

Gives new meaning to the term “bad blood,” doesn’t it.

So soon my primary doctor will read the test results and probably offer some suggestions. I’m willing to follow them, because nobody wants to find their healthy meter has suddenly expired and it’s the end.

At least if I “checked out” in the cafeteria, somebody would say, “Must’ve been the oatmeal of the day.”

Has anybody else noticed that it has become harder to get a group of people in one place that does not involve an online meeting?

This year is my high school class reunion, and it seems as if every five years the number of people involved dwindles. It doesn’t appear to be due to folks passing on as much as it is because of the logistics of distance. Nobody stays in their hometown anymore. Gee, is there such a thing as a hometown for anybody?

It seems that everybody moves far away from where they went to school. A friend of mine has two children, both of whom moved across the country upon graduation (one half-way, the other to the opposite coast), and she sees them during the holidays when the families congregate in one place at least once a year. So it is with quite a few of the graduates, who in those days may have stayed put for five or ten years or so after picking up their diplomas, but then relocated elsewhere and lost touch. We still haven’t found a handful of people; it’s as if they moved to Mars or went into witness protection.

I don’t have a problem with them finding me, because I’ve lived in the same home all my life (and the high school is a few minutes’ walk from there), so I’m easy to locate. That explains why nobody contacts me. I’m like that famous place in your home state; since you know where it is, you figure it’s always going to be there, and you’ll get around to it when you’re ready. My contacts have been limited to social media group messages. As long as I get them, I guess they know I’m still living.

My hobbies over the years have also produced various circles of friends, and we also have trouble getting together. One of our groups had planned a big reunion which was interrupted by a certain worldwide problem. The last time we managed to do something as a group, we had a luncheon at Red Robin for five (out of a good thirty people). After so much time has passed, a few of us have mobility issues or can’t travel. I put the suggestion out there for a Zoom reunion. This would enable the movement challenged to be part of the action. We won’t have much longer to reconnect with some of us, which is depressing. The higher the numbers in your reunion, the lower the number of people you’ll actually get to see there.

My mother went to one class reunion–her fiftieth–and I drove her there. She remembered every face in the crowd as if no time had passed at all. I felt privileged to experience the happiness she felt when people were genuinely glad to see her. The invitation came by snail mail, so I suppose they figured out who had passed on by which envelopes were sent back by the post office.

Our world has become so out of touch that even reunions are suffering. It’s sad to think that the end of a long journey, such as twelve years of schooling, ends so abruptly that few care about the nostalgia of our lives while we shared them in those classrooms.

It’s not as if we live forever. The memories die with us.

I went to see a horror movie last night (The Last Voyage of the Demeter), so with theatres basing their pre-movie fare on the theme of the main feature (which was rated R), I fully expected the trailers to be terrifying as well. I wasn’t disappointed. With the exception of the live-action comedy Strays (featuring the voices of Jamie Foxx and Will Ferrell in a canine gang), my friend and I were subjected to an endless pummeling of our sanity with gut-punching promises of gore, killings and shock.

In watching the movie I chose, I did so preferring the traditional movie monsters and tropes. Without adding spoilers, I can say that I got more good scares out of the movie, and nothing in the trailers convinced me to come out to see a majority of the movies they touted. The inhumanity in the way fear is exploited is becoming more extreme as people become numbed to the old methods. The trailers I saw leaned toward psychological horror, with an underbelly of the visceral, and I wasn’t particularly impressed by any of that.

The first movie in the lineup was an unusual one called It Lives Inside. The premise is based upon an East Indian cultural demon and looks like it involves a spiritual haunting from which an afflicted person cannot escape. Worse than that, anybody trying to help the person is also targeted for horrible happenings. This one made me jump and cringe a bit.

The Nun II movie is on the way. I never saw the other related ones, but it promises to offer similar jump scares, lots of blood and anti-religious frights. I knew it wasn’t for me, and the trailer didn’t change my mind.

The one film I was already familiar with and knew was coming was The Exorcist: Believer, which appears to be a franchise update. Ellen Burstein reprises her role as Chris McNeil, whose daughter Regan (Linda Blair) survived demonic possession. She is called to a home to help a father whose daughter and a friend are seemingly possessed. This seems to be a tribute to the original move which was released 50 years ago. Having seen the original a few times, I may catch this on home release, where I can change the channel if it’s over-the-top disgusting.

The big trailer was for Five Nights at Freddy’s. Having seen some of the licensed figures, I paid no attention because they didn’t seem at all engaging. Apparently this is a story of Chuck E. Cheese meets possession of some sort, with a security guard and his daughter meeting up with animatronics in an abandoned theme park which come to life, kidnap children and commit mayhem and murder. I sure hope this doesn’t spell the end for the pizza franchise (or worse, Disney).

A less horrific offering but still with death and fear as a theme was an Hercule Poirot mystery remake, A Haunting in Venice. It delves into the possibility of psychics actually being able to summon the dead. The great Belgian detective is pushed to his limits as he attempts to unravel a séance connected Halloween murder in Italy. The Agatha Christie based story brings back Kenneth Branagh as the sleuth after a successful turn in Death on the Nile. This one is a possibility.

I suppose my problem is that I don’t find the horror franchises which depict murder entertaining. And when I say murder, I am referring to cold killing of a human being by another. I sat through a couple of Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but they’re not at the top of my favorites list. Monsters and supernatural beings offer the safety of their implausibility, so watching a man/bat terrorize a ship’s crew didn’t faze me, in spite of barrels of blood. At least I was primed for it, having been amped up by the frightening reels of coming attractions rolled out beforehand.

Maybe I should take up going to comedy shows. At least the pre-show acts would make me laugh, too.

Sometimes the important news of the week is not worth repeating, and with politics and weather dominating the media, I looked elsewhere for inspiration. I found it in an article about a woman challenging the science behind the everyday queue in public places. She was standing with her baggage at the airport to check in and refused to move up when the line in front of her began to thin out. She replied to anybody who asked her why she wouldn’t tighten the line that it wouldn’t matter when she moved up, because everybody would get waited upon in the same order.

This meant that a growing gap was creating space between the queue near the front of the line and herself with the others waiting behind her. Her intention, then, was to wait until the entire line ahead of her was gone, and then she would parade herself–dragging, carrying or rolling her luggage–up to the head of the stanchions and cordoning ribbons or ropes– across the open space to the counter.

This is what is sometimes referred to as commanding a room, in which your behavior draws attention to your authoritative presence. But if you have no authority, you sometimes seem the fool.

Two examples of this concept of commanding a room appear in the Harry Potter movies⁽¹⁾, when Professor Snape entered the classroom, magically shut the windows with a wave of his hand and bringing systematic bangs of finality, then intoned to the class softly, “Turn to page 394.”

Perhaps the etiquette rules for behavior in the queue also appear on page 394 of Emily Post’s guidebook (yes, it’s still out there).

Delores Umbridge was another Hogwarts example, but she used her stride (in pink high heels, no less) to make her point. People of every age are familiar with the sounds of footsteps approaching; my mother had an elementary school teacher with a wooden leg, whose comings and goings were particularly frightful because of the distinctive step of one limb and the clunking of the other. Prosthetics were heavy in the 1930s.

This power play from the woman in the airport is certainly debatable. She apparently set herself up as a living challenge line for those behind her to dare step ahead of her (none did) and took on the role of gatekeeper for the rest of those waiting their turn. Everybody there was “next,” and quietly and politely adopted that role for however long it took for those in front to move up. The woman shunned that role and made the line, to observers, seem awkward.

The placing of ropes and stanchions is designed to provide an orderly open-ended system for a specific purpose. The other airport users–staff and passengers alike–used the public walkways to move about, and those in line to check in were protected by clear lines of usage and boundaries. One commenter noted that the major problem would have arisen if her standing so far back began to cause spillage past the end of the queue design and into the public areas. Also, the staff at the airport and passers-by would normally have a clear idea of how many persons were waiting in line, and her defiance skewed that perception. It was not the speed at which people were served, since the next person is always the next person until the one ahead of them is finished with their business, but a queue depends upon a spatial order to operate optimally.

One time I was pulling up to an outdoor ATM, and a large vehicle was there finishing a transaction. I did not move up behind their bumper to wait, but since no other cars were approaching at that moment, I stopped a good car length or two behind while I retrieved my ATM card. A driver moments later was pulling up behind me and swerved to move ahead of me, pulling up to the other vehicle. Obviously they thought I was being an idiot by not moving up. Instead, I knew they were an idiot for being rude.

It’s all about giving reasonable space. And waiting one’s turn the normal way.

⁽¹⁾ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Recently a nostalgia group posted pictures on social media depicting a local mall when it was first opened. I was not yet two years old, but the event was a major celebration; a countless array of stores under a huge roof, fully enclosed and climate controlled in any weather. The birth of shopping malls was a boom for the economy, and everybody in the family enjoyed the experience of shopping there.

If I were to go back in time, I would like to visit the old mall. Back then, the act of reaching a destination was more pleasant than now. People drove the speed limit, and parking lots were navigated in a mannerly fashion. The men wore properly ironed shirts with ties, dressed in sport jackets and hats, and had their shoes properly shined. The women wore dresses and flats, and their hair was stylish and neat. Children behaved.

The department stores anchoring the ends of the mall were bustling but orderly places to find practically anything by going to the department stocking them. Each department was overseen by an expert trained in the merchandise they sold. They wore uniforms or name tags. Entire drawers of hosiery for women were meticulously labeled behind the glass counter, and you bought your stockings by your foot size, not small, medium or large. Women also were gloves, sized to fit. Coordinated jewelry didn’t come in a stack of pre-boxed piles through which you rummaged to find what you wanted, but were brought out for you to examine and then lovingly placed in a box with the store logo on it and stamped cotton squares of cushioning inside on purchase. They also had the perfect sized paper bag for you.

The store had an excellent restaurant for a quick lunch or full dinner, and a terrace overlooked the scene beneath, where fountains produced a joyous show of jets and rings of rhythmic water waves cascading into a round pool where seating enabled families to rest and enjoy the show or the passing crowds.

Greenery was carefully attended throughout the walkways; some areas were landscaped over wooden bridges or under large wooden gazebos with benches. Overhead were large tropical trees, and overhead were huge windows allowing the natural light to bathe the inside.

The smaller stores held a variety of choices; hats, tee shirts, home accessories, a bakery. Another throwback to simpler times was Woolworth’s, the classic “five and dime” store which also had a cafeteria and a spot to grab a hotdog and eat it while you strolled.

A movie theatre was accessible from outside as well as in the mall itself. Arcades and barber shops took up residences in small stores lining corridors off the main path.

On weekends and during holidays, the mall would add special events such as baseball card shows, interactive exhibits and the Easter Bunny and Santa. The information booth would become a gift wrap station in November and December, and even the most exhausted worker would offer a professional smile to the harried shoppers in line.

Nowadays the mall has lost its original identity and seems more a utilitarian stop than something to anticipate. The same mall to which my parents took me as a toddler is still there, and some of the old feel remains, but only when you know where to look for it. I can shop there in jeans and a tee shirt, and I miss the greenery.

But I can still remember when it was all there, and smile.