Mobile memories and mall malaise

Shopping for Treasures
By
Debbie Lindsey

“Excuse me, that’s my nasty bra.”
To my horror the sales lady was holding my bra as if it were a dead rat and rapidly approaching the trash bin, all the while declaring the garment unfit for human viewing with her disdainful: “And someone left this NASTY bra in the dressing room….” This was a rather unique approach to assisting me in my selection.
“Ma’am I would like to wear it home if you would be so kind as to fish it out of the waste paper basket. Yes, there it is, it has slipped down pass the Burger King wrapper. And maybe you could cancel the call to security now that you have my nasty bra as collateral while I finish trying on my selection.”
So for the tenth time I walked through electronic buzzers, loud enough to perforate an eardrum, to my dressing room. It was not turning out to be fun. The foundations department had every type of poly-fiber filled harness a woman could want – if she was not 34 D.
“Common size?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Are you out for that reason?”
“No.”
“Will you receive more?”
“Doubt it.”
This is the part about shopping that is NOT conveyed in the full page Sunday newspaper ads that feature smiling women sporting perfect bosoms and clad in every style of size 34 D. The models wearing all the size 34 D’s not offered in the store also do not appear to suggest menopause. I finally get the larger breast I thought I wanted thanks to a hormonal hurricane. The only hitch is they hurt. I carry them about like wounded kittens. I feel like they were run over and they look it. And I just want to run screaming out of the mall – with or without proper support.
When did shopping become so unpleasant for me? Oh, of course thrift stores, Walgreens, Joe’s Wine Cellar, and any food store not found within a Wal-Mart still cause me to smile. But I encounter a mind numbing malaise just thinking about that obligatory trip to the mall for the annual supply of sheets, undies, and assorted items rarely found at yard sales. It was not always this way – in fact I can actually recall a mall of a kinder, gentler era.
There was a time when we manufactured in the good ole U.S. of A. That’s right, clothing was made here and you actually got what you paid for – not a product designed to self-destruct before the credit card billing. Shoes were made to last, and garments could linger beneath mothballs and await the pendulum of fashion to return them to favor or fad. Designer labels, while always pretentious, did at least mean quality rather than simply the object of counterfeit knock-offs for conspicuous consumerism.
Before there were political ramifications with every purchase and it became necessary to consult the conscience before the wallet and review Amnesty International rather than Women’s Wear Daily… I enjoyed buying stuff.
In the sixties shopping began to sprawl away from downtowns and toward suburbia and sprawl it did in the form of shopping centers. In Mobile we drained a critical wetland area (then referred to as “nuttin’ but an ole swamp”) and built Springdale Plaza which also sucked dry a once vital downtown. But this was pre-Sierra Club and I was young enough to shop in blissful ignorance. A modest allowance went far back then and I was allowed to roam in and out of various notions and toy stores as Mom shopped for more grownup fare in Gayfers, our major department store.
But, before I could free range there was “the parking”. God forbid Mom not find a parking space up close. So my muscles would twitch as she cruised the lot, circling prime parking spaces, stalking shoppers as they emerged from storefronts and tailing them to that perfect, soon-to-be vacated space suitable for our Ford. Having just used enough gasoline to vacation cross-country I never saw the fairness in her refusal to raise my allowance. But with the car now parked within inches of the storefronts she could think once again of rations and budgets.
As the swamp became a thing of the past there was room for the future! Soon Belaire Mall would begin construction adjacent to Springdale and it promised to offer acres of parking! Mom could hardly wait. I had just crossed into puberty, having been fitted for my first brassiere a year earlier at Gayfers’ foundations department, and was becoming an obnoxious teenager when the Mall had it’s grand opening. My first strike at independence was to have Mom leave me at the front entrance before she began her laps up and down lanes of black shiny asphalt.
And so it began. My tomboy Saturdays of catching tadpoles and snakes were replaced with catching rides to the Mall. My girlfriends and I would amuse ourselves for hours trying on clothes we could not afford and forcing sales ladies to rethink their career choices. Nothing is as rude and overwhelming as gaggle of hormone surging eighth graders. However, we were customers-in-waiting and within a year we began turning over all our babysitting dollars to these shopkeepers for the thrill of choosing our own wardrobes.
The Mall saw me through more costume changes than a Broadway play. Peter pan collars (monogrammed of course), a-line skirts, and Weegen loafers soon morphed into tie-dyed tanks, bell-bottoms, and moccasins. Girdles and stockings gave way to tights and pantyhose; bras were bought, bras were burned, and later empowered as WONDER bras. Mini, midi, and maxi careened up and down. Fashion rebelled as often as I did.
Just as I view today’s malls as cold and heartless enclosures that set my teeth to itching, there were folks back then who felt the same about my mall and mourned the decline of our downtown with its venerable haberdasheries and emporiums. But, I grew up -- came of age, in my “cold and heartless” mall. The times, they change. And so did I. From training bras to evening gowns; first holding my mother’s hand, then a boyfriend’s; burgers and malts changed to salads and wine -- I got older in that mall.
After the Nasty Bra debacle I found a friendlier foundations department and stocked up. Just before the sales lady ran my credit card she pointed out some additional sales across the aisle. “Thanks, but I would rather be beaten than to spend another minute shopping.” She looked at me as if I had lost not only my mind but also my uterus. In her eyes I was a disgrace to women everywhere.
Leaving the mall in a shopping snit and feeling smug in my detachment I nearly overlooked a little girl and her mother sharing the afternoon, giggling like two best friends -- they would remember holding hands, not packages. And their memories would be no less valued for having happened at the mall.