I think someone keeps stealing time from me. I always think I have more time to do things during the day…and then I keep coming up short. What’s up with that? <\/p>\n

So this past weekend I ended up at the mall. It was a “necessary evil” trip…unfortunately, it didn’t include Kira Nerys or Odo (and if you get that geek reference, I’m imaginary high-fiving you right now). My part of the necessary evil was that I needed to take one of my watches to the jeweler for a new battery. <\/p>\n

I hate malls. HATE them. It’s not just the overwhelming sense of so many people crammed like cattle inside one building (although that has a huge role in the enmity, since I do <\/em>hate people). No, this hatred springs from the well of teen angst that drilled into my soul many, many moons ago. <\/p>\n

Remember when everyone who was anyone in the teen safari was a mall rat? It was the cool place to be seen, the replacement hangout when skating rinks began to slowly fade into the ephemera of former awesomeness. <\/p>\n

I remember when we finally got our own mall. I remember going there with my parents when it first opened. It was the summer before I started high school. I was a fat, fashionless introvert with acne and no self esteem. I was the hippopotamus to the mall rat lions. Teenagers can smell internalized inferiority like dogs can smell fear. <\/p>\n

Going with high school friends made the mall slightly less traumatic. So did losing a lot of weight and no longer dressing like I was a lost member of the Von Trapp family. In fact, I dropped all color from my wardrobe minus black and purple. Lots of leather. Lots of silver jewelry. Lots of black nail polish. And, of course, this was the period of my life that gave birth to the aforementioned “sideways rooster comb.” <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[Okay, this is a sad tangential moment for me: I saw a photo the other day of a famous person who styles their hair in a way similar to the sideways rooster comb. The famous person was Conan O’Brien. Whathafu?!? Seriously, see the front of his hair in this photo? Imagine this slightly higher, with bangs down to his eyes, teased out on the sides, and long in the back, but pretty much the same color. I don’t know who to feel worse for: my teenaged self or Conan O’Brien.]<\/p>\n

Still, I knew I was a poseur. I was a private school honor society nerd to whom the public school life was as alien as Q’onoS would be to a Bajoran (it also didn’t help that I made jokes like this back then, too). I was less cool than public school band members (at least they went to a school big enough to actually have <\/em>a band). <\/p>\n

It wasn’t all bad. I had my little school clique. I had my Smurfy blue Chevette. I had Suncoast and Waldenbooks, both places wherein I would sequester myself for hours of uninterrupted geekery. But to this day the mall represents all those worries and fears that only seem important when you’re a teenager, but continue to haunt you well into your dotage (I am, after all, now untrustworthy according to Bob Dylan). It’s silly, I know, but these are all the things that flood over me the instant I near a mall. Apparently, I still carry around a kernel of internalized inferiority. <\/p>\n

Want to know the real kick in the pants? I ended up forgetting my watch at home. So I hid out in the Borders Express for a while (this is what all Waldenbooks have become in this area), bought a Star Trek<\/em> novel, and scurried out into the fresh air and sun before the mall rat pheromones even had a chance to permeate my clothing. Strangely enough, these pheromones smell exactly like Sbarro pizza…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think someone keeps stealing time from me. I always think I have more time to do things during the day…and then I keep coming up short. What’s up with that? So this past weekend I ended up at the mall. It was a “necessary evil” trip…unfortunately, it didn’t include Kira Nerys or Odo (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}