A trip to the mall.

Read any of my blog posts, here or on my other blog, and you might quickly realize that I am basically a walking contradiction. Things like being a technophobic technophile and a safety seeking risk taker. In a nutshell I am a complicated guy who thrives on simplicity.

""That said, I went to the mall today.

Now it is my opinion that those who design malls go to the same school of torture as Arizona parking lot designers, New Mexico sign makers, and Massachusetts highway planners.

This was a trip planned for a while. My mother had a few items she wanted to pick up, and they were big enough that she needed to bring her own pack mule. The plan was to run into the one store she wanted to visit, get what she wanted, then go have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. This sounded like my type of shopping so I actually kind of looked forward to the little outing.

Silly me.

The first challenge was figuring out where to park. Since in my complicated simplicity I can’t drive legally, mom was driving. She knew exactly where she wanted to go. Unfortunately in the couple of years since she visited the mall last it had morphed, so what once was a simple "just turn here and here" now became a "turn here, here, u-turn here, turn three times here, and finally turn here". All without signs of course. Thankfully mom being a female and all she was not afraid to ask for directions. The mall employee she asked had no clue, but she DID ask.

Now parked outside Sears which may or may not have been somewhere near what we were aiming for, the challenge was to get from Sears to the mall. Getting into Sears was very easy. Getting out was a different story. We actually had to ask directions twice in Sears alone just to figure out how to get into the mall.

<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1267" title="It’s right there …" src="http://ninjacatjournals.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/img_0283.jpg?w=224" alt="" width="224" height="300" />In the mall proper the next challenge was to find the store we wanted. Fortunately there was a mall directory right over there. Unfortunately it was of no benefit whatsoever other than giving us hope that we were, in fact, theoretically near our objective. Once we figured out what classification our store fell under so we could find it under the index, we were given a location that seemed to be "right down that hall there" if one looked at the map. But if you looked at "that hall there" it ended shortly at a mall exit. Trusty mom again asks for assistance, this time by one who actually knew the answer. It seems the map was correct, if we exit the mall again we will find our store. Either that or take a torturous route via Canada.

Store found, purchase made rather quickly and easily. Objects loaded onto the mule, the decision was made to take them back to put into the car before attempting the trek to the Cheesecake Factory. We retrace our steps, only to get lost in Sears again (they really don’t want you to leave). Thankfully mom again asked directions of someone who only looked like a Sears employee, who of course had no more idea than we did, but it gave me the time to get my bearings. We made it safely back to the car, and, seasoned mall explorers that we were now, found our way back through Sears to the oh so helpful mall directory. Once again it seemed our new objective was "right there", but skeptical now we asked directions, and found about the one mountain pass that would actually get us there (of course we had to leave the mall again).

Once we arrive, we were quickly seated in the Cheesecake Factory, and expectations were high that all would be made well; that all aftereffects of the difficult journey so far would be wiped clean. After all it is The Cheesecake Factory.

As I mentioned before, silly me.

Let’s just say I am still traumatized enough now that I am yet to find the humor in that particular less than ideal meal, so am opting for a rant on my other blog instead.

I really should know by now that malls are beyond my abilities to cope!