Mall Report: Apparently, People Still Shop Ingram Park Mall...

My wife and I had an important errand to run Saturday afternoon at 3PM but through the use of modern cellular communications, we were able to learn that we would not be needed downtown until closer to 4PM. Since we were already on the road and since I had a watch that stopped at 11 o'clock (it was closer to 2), I suggested we run into Ingram Park Mall and get a battery for the malciferated watch and kill a little time.

I really only have a handful of reasons that can get me to the mall these days. One is JC Penny's. I like the slacks they sell and more importantly, you can get into Penny's without going into the mall.

There is also a Security Service Credit Union outlet in the mall, so if for some insane reason you need to make a transaction that can't be done at an ATM machine and it is after 5PM, you can go in there. Oh, and it is at the entrance to the mall, so technically, you don't have to go into the mall.

But on this day, we would have to actually go inside the inner bowels of the mall where one must negotiate crowded spaces with undesirable elements of society - teenagers and such. The little kiosk my wife always goes to for watch and jewelry repair is on the lower level, I think where there used to be a Luby's. I'm not sure if it is still there or not. Anyway, Sears is the anchor on that end of the mall.

So the guy there is extremely nice and recognizes my wife right away from the repeat business and takes a quick look at my watch and says he can fix it up in about 15 minutes. So, what this means is, we had to stay in the mall for another 15 minutes.

We did run into Kirklands and buy a picture but then decided that we better eat. Okay, in theory, the concept of the food court is a great idea. You take a dozen or so diverse restaurant outlets, put them in an open space, then provide shared seating so that people in the same party can eat different foods but sit together. The problem with this is, you have to sit with other people. Mall people.

If you ever have a poor body image, feel as though you are too overweight, have a bad complexion, don't dress right, or are generally ugly, I'd like to offer up a little advice. Take a day trip to the food court and Ingram Park Mall some weekend and I promise, you will come out of there feeling like you could win the Miss Teen USA contest without having to know where America is on a map. You can ask my wife; I'm no fancy dresser and once, I was able to leave the house wearing white socks and sandals (much to the embarrassment of my wife), but after mingling with the people at this food court, I actually looked reasonable.

One word people: Mirror. Look at yourself in the mirror and if it looks good to you, you need to change. That's right. If you are one of the men I saw at the food court yesterday who looked in the mirror at your Capri pants and said, "I look good being a man wearing Capri's" you are no longer able to trust your own instincts. I know gay people who think that men who wear Capri's look too gay to be seen in public.

Okay, so we were in the food court and my wife had a hankerin' for Chic-Fil-A . No thanks. So while she was rounding up some of that, I saw this place that sells Philly Cheese Steaks. I looke over the menu and I saw that they also sell a Muffuletta.

The Muffuletta's I know about come on a big round piece of bread and have some sort of olive salad on the bottom, then covered with the meats and cheeses. This one came on a sub bun, and there was no hint or discussion of olives at all. It was simply some fried salami or something with cheese melted on it. So, in the same way that Subway asks you what toppings you would like on it, I asked the lady for some black olives to go on my fried bologna sandwich.

Hell, I ought to be a sandwich creator because the end result was pretty darn tasty. I ate the entire thing without complaint, other than it wasn't what I thought I was ordering.

In the meantime, my wife and I used the time to observe the unfortunate people put upon this earth to congregate in a place for the sole purpose of providing us reason to feel better about our looks. We aren't shallow people, we just use the tools we are given.