Don't Buy Crap

We have only one large indoor corporate mall in my town, and that's probably one too many. Thankfully, Vitamin World is the closest store to the entrance by the food court. My infrequent forays into the mall usually involve nothing more than a quick trip to Vitamin World for the 7-Keto DHEA that I need to function on a daily basis. I'm in and blissfully out in mere minutes.

Tonight, however, I had to venture deep into the mall on a special mission: to find a relatively cheap shirt for tomorrow's "Hawaiian Shirt Day" at my husband's office. ("You're kidding, right?" I said.) After some negotiation, I agreed to scope things out while he ran other errands.

Would you believe that Sears, JCPenny, and Macy's were completely out of Hawaiian shirts in size XXL? I dragged myself to the Bergner's wing and up the Bergner's escalator to menswear. Bingo! One Hawaiian shirt in XXL marked down from $68 to $19.95. Thank You, Universe. Then it was back to the food court to collapse on a bench and wait for hubby to rescue me.

I learned a lot from this evening's excursion. I learned that:

• When American women dress for the mall, nothing is too short or too tight.
• There are a lot more conservative Muslim woman in this community than I knew. When the heat index is 100 and you're draped from head to toe in heavy fabric, an indoor mall is probably you're best shopping destination.
• I need a lot of tissues when walking the mall because of my allergic reaction to the multitude of stores devoted to smelliness: candle stores, perfume stores, bath stores. Ack!
• Eddie Bauer and Starbuck's aren't there anymore but Asian guys soliciting people for seated massages are. What??
• Some stores now have fat manikins in the fat ladies clothing section . . . but the clothes still suck.
  
• Despite losing 20 pounds, seeing my reflection in full-length windows does not make me feel good.
• Seeing a lot of tiny Asian women in cute tiny clothes does not make me feel good.
• Incessant calliope music is more annoying than you'd think.

One thing I did not learn (since I already knew it) is that the mall is full of crap: jewely crap, clothing crap, housewares crap, amazingly useless crap . . . . And I was reminded of something very important that I learned way too late in life: don't buy crap. (Hawaiian shirts notwithstanding.) You can waste a whole lot of money buying a whole lot of crap. Instead, spend that money on a few top-quality items. How much nicer it is to have less stuff that works better, looks better, and lasts longer than all that crap. And it doesn't clutter your house.

Of course, if we didn't buy all that crap, what would we do with all the Wal-Marts, mega-malls, and sweatshops?