Malls and people

The smell of Aunt Annie's Pretzels scrambling for attention alongside the whiff of mulberry and butter cookies from Yankee Candles---this is your quintessential American mall. You could go from one state to another, and nothing would have changed. The exact same smells, the exact same music, maybe not the exact same people, well some. And when you start to observe, spy, sight upon all the different people at the mall, you realize that, within those same malls live a thousand different stories.

So we park near Nordstrom, and upon entering, we see mommies, daddies and their kiddies in matching Uggs, looking for more full-priced Uggs in an almost frantic manner, as if it were the last pair of Uggs. Then you see a few younguns, at the cash register scrambling for which credit card to charge. But that doesn't keep them from buying two pairs of Uggs. Switch to the next and you see, a few like us, peering over the price tags and just moving forward. Dead sure that those boots can be bought for 1/4th the price elsewhere. But who are we?

My husband and I are a recently-married-south-asian-in-their-late-twenties-post-graduate-degrees-holding-single-income-couple. So what do people like us do at the mall? Besides walking blind past all the "40% off your entire purchase" signs, we deliberate-- constantly. A quick stop at the clearance rack at the Gap and we are convinced that we'd much rather put that 27.99 toward a pendant lamp. or not. Next, a quick stop at Sephora, a haven for madness for the both of us.While he sprays on the latest from Y'ves Saint Laurent, I try on NARS's lipgloss in Angelika which truly makes me look like an angel,except the price tag will set me back 25.99. A quick turnabout and we are still walking. Finally, we reach the upstairs and lo behold. There is a swarm of what look like rich people in front of Teavna- hogging the tea samples. I thought those samples were for the people who'd rather not go to Starbucks, but of well. Soon we land at the food court. Having frequented the mall more than once in our lives, we decide to hold on to the tiny cups from Teavana until I go home and whip up a quick beef stew, using of course, a cut of beef thats best described as 'gelatinous'.