Mall of Torture

I just might be the bravest person you know.  Oh sure, there are police officers and fire fighters and soldiers out there who selflessly put their lives on the line every day for perfect strangers, but I -- I alone -- took three tweenage girls to the Mall of Georgia.  Yes, I was alone with these girls for approximately 8 hours.  Yes, I know you think this is the sort of thing people are generally sentenced to as opposed to doing voluntarily, but I am selfless and benevolent like that.  Plus, I am bat-poop crazy.

 To mitigate the circumstances, these were exceptionally good girls.  They are all straight A students who originally bonded over the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series of books.  They refer to each other by their 'goddess' names: Athena, Artemis, and Minerva.  They are all polite and considerate and loud and giggly and squealy.  And so cute it makes my heart hurt.

This trip was in lieu of a birthday party for my daughter.  The original deal was that we would go to Universal Studios in Orlando (specifically Harry Potter World, or whatever it is called) during fall break instead of having a birthday party in January, her real birthday month.  We did go to Universal, and it was fun, but my son's birthday fell in the middle of our trip.  I'm all about getting whatever free birthday stuff can be gotten whenever and wherever it can be gotten, so every time we sat down to eat for the day before, of, and after I announced loudly to whomever might possibly be in charge of giving away birthday favors that it was his birthday.  This made my daughter, um, Minerva, mad as only a preteen girl can be because we were there for HER birthday, and why wasn't anyone making a fuss about HER???

So, after three months of a ginormous chip on her shoulder, I caved, and took her and her besties on a little adventure in shopping.

Let me say right here that although there are some forms of shopping I like, I cannot bear the Mall of Georgia.  Most likely, all the things I dislike about it are the same things my daughter does like about it.  There are swirling masses of humanity, all starting and stopping without warning and going in unpredictable directions and all carrying packages they occasionally whap into you by accident.  Most of the stores play loud, horrible pop music.  There are lots of stores selling identical merchandise that no one needs but everyone wants.    Plus, I was in charge of two little girls who were lent to me by their parents for the evening and they were both shorter than my daughter, and therefore easy to lose in sea of grownups.  If I had a nickel for each time I said, "Girls!  Stay together!" I probably could have bought anything in the mall, up to and including those very tempting calf massage chairs at The Sharper Image.

For reasons unclear to me, the girls insisted on going to the La-Z-Boy store, though I'm sure none of them were interested in buying furniture, even if it did have a remote control footrest.  They ran in all giggly and would all cram themselves into one chair, make a flurry of noise, and then find another chair to cram themselves in.  A poor saleswoman kept trying to talk to me, and I pretended to be interested in a coffee table, which I actually was fantasy-interested in, so as to justify our loud presence in the otherwise peaceful and grown-up store.  I barked at the girls at one point to quit running, at which point they all spontaneously, as if choreographed, began walking up and down in the aisles like they worked for Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.

They then went to the room in Charming Charlie's for kids called Charlie Girl.  For those women out there who have never been to Charming Charlie's, let me tell you what you are missing out on: acres of color coordinated costume jewelry and accessories at reasonable prices.  Seriously girly, sparkly heaven.  The girls debated and looked, and eventually bought matching purses.  The purses are really stinking adorable, and it makes me sad that I am probably thirty or more years too old to get away with carrying one just like it.  The purse is pink rubber and has ears and a face on it.  At first I thought it was a pig because of the piggy pink color, but the nose is all wrong.  Minerva said it looked like a panda mixed with a flamingo, and so calls it her "flamingear" (pronounced fluh-MIN- gair.)

Then we went to Barnes and Noble's, where they flew up the escalator to find their beloved Percy Jackson books.  I was afraid they would leave behind their Charming Charlie bags in which they had stuffed their old, non-pink vinyl purses, so I offered to hold them.  Since I am still mainly one handed due to my adventures in Pickleballing, I threaded the handles of the bag over my right wrist.  I knew my son wanted the third book from the Shadow Hunter series, which I could not find, even after asking a few kids his age.  So I asked a sales woman where they would be.  She said she thought the series was actually called something like the City of Bones.  I went to call my son to find out the actual name of the book, and realized that I couldn't get into my purse with my broken wrist to get the phone, so I had to put the CC bags down.  Only I couldn't.  I couldn't shake them off my wrist, and I didn't have enough strength in the fingers sticking out from the splint to pull them off.  So I was forced to say to the saleswoman, "I have an embarrassing favor to ask.  Can you pull these bags off my wrist?"  I knew the girls were ok while this was going on because I could hear the giggling.  I think everyone could hear the giggling.  I did not hush them, because as far as I am concerned, pure, innocent laughter is the best music out there, certainly better than the electronic, auto-tuned, vapid, semi-crude mess blaring from the speakers everywhere else.

The evening wore on, including an entire hour of Justice(tm), home of everything sparkly, animal printed, and rainbowed. (These are not three separate things.  I meant the 'and.'  You can find anything you want there with all three qualities.)  We wandered in a few more stores, ate food court chicken for dinner, and eventually they suckered me in to capping off the evening with a movie, Frozen, which I have to say in all seriousness is probably the best Disney movie ever made. 

I was proud of the girls all through the afternoon, evening, and night, despite their occasional obliviousness to their surroundings and blocking doorways, hallways, and escalator entrances.  They wouldn't buy anything unless it could be bought in triplicate, and kept passing money back and forth to make sure that they all had enough to get the job done.  Then my daughter fretted that if they all wore their shirts (frugally purchased from the clearance rack at Justice) and purses and 'water bracelets' to school at the same time they would make their other friends feel left out.

Those girls.  They really are goddesses.

Lori Duff is the author of "Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza", an Amazon Hot New Release and available at Amazon and other quality retailers.