Saturday, January 03, 2009 - Posts
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Anybody else miss out on the shopping gene? Other people who are not Keira Knightley seem to enjoy it, though. Now that my kids are getting older—they turn 13 in a couple of weeks—they are showing signs that it only skipped a generation, which is how I wound up spending my Friday night at the Montgomery Mall. And seeing for myself what deep trouble we are in: No one was there, shoppers or salespeople, to the point that I began to have horror-flick fantasies. (Oh no, it's the Rapture and we've been left behind at the Montgomery Mall? How humiliating.) Because no one can afford new inventory, it was also like a visit to the Island of Misfit Toys (and Sweaters)—with everything good and pawed over, and prices so marked down that the signs might as well have said, What Were We Thinking? (I saw the same crèche I bought in Assisi a couple of years ago for about 20 times the price, marked down by 50 percent. But even in flush times, what nincompoop was ever going to spend 700 bucks for three plastic wise men?)
I was sorry I even walked into the furniture store, since by doing so I cruelly raised the hopes of the woman who was obviously the owner. Lots of good bargains, she called out, and seemed like she was about to cry. At this little "jewelry'' store my daughter likes, everything in the place was on sale for $2.99. We were the only customers and had to wait at the checkout for quite some time before a lone employee emerged from the back office to ring us up. The store was going out of business in a couple of days, she said. Oh, I'm sorry, I started to say, but she stopped me: Nah, not to worry; it wasn't her store, thank God, though this was the fourth business in the mall to go under in the last month alone, and she was starting to wonder where she was going to find a J-O-B. The place was so still all through Christmas, she said, that the highlight of her season was the day a shoplifter ran through the mall with six or eight security guards in hot pursuit—and got away. Gosh, not so entertaining for the proprietors, though, huh? And I can't help but think how much harder the months or years ahead are going to be for people who used to like coming here.
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