"I'd like to be a mall."
"Really? And have people going in and out of you all day?"
This is the scintillating back and forth that can ensue when you're on your 6th day together, with very few breaks away, lots (for us) snow on the ground, no school, and minds wandering deprived across landscapes of disconnected weirdness. So, if you were a mall - what would you have in your Food Court?
I would have a Petro's. I can only say this now because I have spent a fucking half hour looking up various permutations of "Chili Cup Mall" and thinking that they were a defunct chain. They aren't, and I am happy. I was describing this to my kids, everything from the "you could carry this thing around the mall like a street taco" to the diagram you see at left, to the magical slurry of chili goodness and saturated corn chips that was left over at the bottom of the cup when you got close to done - man, that is a vivid childhood sense memory. I can only assume (based upon where they are located) that this was a field trip gastronomic adventure experience.
Next to Petro's, I would have an Orange Julius. Orange fucking Julius, man, with powdered egg whites, and they mixed that shit right in front of you, and there were little ice crystals on top of the drink that bumped up against the lid and crackled in the foam. And I hope that they put powdered egg whites in there, but I bet they don't, I bet it's EGG CHEATERS or something like that, just like they didn't used to advertise "GF" on the Petro's sign, and I don't think they used to have pasta/macaroni, either. Yankee tourists.
Near that would undoubtedly be a soft pretzel place, a Chinese restaurant with fucked up name owned by Chinese people, and a Noodles & Co., because we don't really have that where I live, either.
So, carbs. Carb up, motherfucker, and walk my goddamn mall. The mall in my mind plays the Commodores' on endless repeat in a dark hallway with a carpeted ceiling that runs between the Food Court and the fully-functional arcade, where nothing costs more than 50 cents to play, and there's Smash TV and Narc right out front, and lots of shooting and driving games and real pinball machines (mostly ones that have movie and rock band stuff on them) and an endless line (but really it's just a mirror with gold leaf in it) of Skee-Ball machines with plenty of shoulder room between each one. Also? Skill cranes and a couple of awesome driving games that didn't exist when I was a kid.
There's a kiosk where you can have your name inexpertly applied to anything, and an actual music store. Out front of the music store, there's a display with dinosaurs in a tarpit, and it says "EXTINCT TUNEAGE" and there's 8-tracks and minidiscs and cassingles and shit all in it. And a video display on repeat of the Parental Advisory logo going in flames on a loop. That's right - repeat AND on a loop. Shaddup. There's a bunch of technology stores, and the anchor stores? The big bastards that the mall is ostensibly for? They're just mock-ups. We occasionally drive our 4-wheelers through them and knock everything down. Then we go back out into the mall proper and play glow-in-the-dark mini golf and eat big cookies and buy Chucks from Journeys and books from everywhere and try not to get VD from Spenser's, where it feels like everything has VD on it. There are no nail places, no underwear emporiums, no blouseterias, and no FUCKING JEWELRY STORES, and you can extend a line of credit everywhere, because it's that kind of place.
There's a theatre, and they fucking spell it like that. It's called the Six-Shooter Theatre, and they have six screens and the kids who work it love film and talk like bartenders. Frozen coke comes with free refills, and there's always something playing that's decent and also always something you can walk out of if you don't want to make fun of it. A walk-out will have their money happily refunded if they can say why they walked out. In complete sentences. Don't fuck about - tell us what you didn't like.
It goes without saying that outside of the dark, carpeted, Commodores hallway, that the rest of mall plays 90s rock interspersed with 80s hip-hop and anything else I like, and that there's football and old movies broadcast on monitors around the interior, and roving bands of teenagers find themselves mute when they hit the SnarkMeter® limits. (SnarkMeters® are subcutaneously installed on every teen upon entering. Old people, too. Everybody.) Finally, there are game stores and comic stores fully functioning and raking in profit, an Irish pub at every junction, and cigar dispensaries throughout. The interior aisles are dotted with tables for sitting and smoking and drinking and talking and eating goddamn magical bowls of layered chili stuff that I thought had ceased to exist.
Recent Comments