There is no doubt that you have by now made an attempt at shopping at our local mall. Some of you people do this on a daily or even weekly basis. I, however, enjoy the mall as straight men like a prostate exam – I know it has to be done, but on a very rare basis. I just didn’t realize that the mall could make the prostate exam look like fun.

To be fair, it wasn’t as if I tried to go shopping on Black Friday, Charcoal Saturday, or even Onyx Sunday. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, after the sun went down, so probably after 4:30 or so. School had to be out for the day, judging from the gangs of teens that roamed the mall, but I’m getting ahead of myself with them. We had just gone to walk through the mall to look for Christmas ideas.

Now, I’ve watched the news and read the paper, so the media has instructed me to hide my money in my mattress because of all the depression that is infecting the country – at least until Barack Obama takes over in January. I’m just saying that, if the country is so bad off, why did I have to park a half-mile from the entrance to the mall on a Monday evening? Not even one homeless person begging by the entrance, so I have to wonder if the media is telling the truth. I just wanted to spend some retail therapy time with my woman at the mall.

Once inside, I enjoyed the usual sights and sounds of the mall – the Christmas decorations that have been up since late August, the pushy people in those little kiosks, and the roving hordes of emo kids. Even the clothes stores that I avoid put me in the Christmas mood this year.

Now, I understand that Christmas is some kind of retail bonanza for the mall, but do we really need to hear and see Christmas in September? It used to be the day after Thanksgiving was the start of the “holiday” season (I’m sure I was pissing someone off with the whole “Christmas” thing), but now it is creeping over into other holidays the way a teenager at the movies tries to get that arm around his date.

Mission accomplished. It seems less like you wanted to drape your holiday arm around us and more like you wanted to feel our tit. I feel used and cheap looking at the decorations months before Christmas, but dirty for shopping the sales that go with them. I guess the free dinner of buy-one-get-one-free sales justifies the groping and loss of my dignity. You’ll be doing it again with Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Memorial Day…

To the pushy salespeople in the little kiosks in the middle of the mall: I don’t want a free sample, free trial, or a demonstration. You are the boil on the butt of humanity, and I would rather drink glass shards and salt than walk within eye-contact distance of you. It’s not to say that you sell crap or anything (I’ve never looked), but you make the perfume ladies in the department stores seem pleasant and polite.

I understand the kiosk is a great idea for your small business, but I don’t think it means that the walkway is your sales floor. I don’t see the Disney Store or even Williams-Sonoma accosting me in the walkway with dolls or copper pots. At least those places have stuff that I am interested in. If you can remember Hickory Farms at the mall, at least they had the decency to stand just inside the store when they were offering free samples, instead of hunting you down as you walked by…

Sitting down in Free Speech Alley at LSU allows me to see the different strata of human cliques on a daily basis. The mall, however, lets me gawk at where those strata of freaks come from. The roving bands of twelve-year-old Goths are heading the other way as the fourteen-year-old gay lovers, complete with frosted hair and designer ripped jeans, are making out right behind me.

I really don’t have anything against gay people, just teenagers who are trying to make a scene about their homosexuality. I enjoy my heterosexuality, but you are not going to see me bending my woman over a table at the mall, because I have enough personal restraint to wait until we get to the car in the parking lot. (Sometimes, at least.)

All of those shows beg the question: Where are the parents? I know most of these kids are too young to drive themselves, and I know my parents would never have let us out in public looking like that. The mall is not an acceptable babysitter (neither is the TV, video games, or the internet), and quit making me watch them for you. You don’t pay me enough and it’s pissing me off. Besides, when your precious princess develops a drug problem, gets pregnant, or goes on a shooting rampage, you always blame everyone but yourself, which I guess is pretty accurate since you were never there. I’ll continue to watch your kids at the mall if and only if I get to beat them … with a bat.

Finally, I come to the reason I needed to vent this month: Abercrombie & Fitch. Really, people? Or as their generation would say, OMG WTF? For years, I was scared to go into their store for fear that someone would slip some ecstasy in my water. It always had a thump-thump beat as I walked by, and the other day, I had to know what was inside of it.

As I approached the entrance, I had to stare at the huge print of a shirtless guy. If I were selling clothes, I would show clothes, not naked people. It makes business sense in my book. Also, I have heard that lighting plays an important role in making sales. You people, however, decided that less lighting means less of an electric bill, and therefore less overhead. I couldn’t see any of the items you sell because your store was lit like a damp dark alley. I half expected to either be mugged or have a tranny named Denis offer me a trick. I actually think Baton Rouge had more lights on the night after Hurricane Gustav than your store has on a daily basis.

I wish I could have said that your store had great merchandise. I wish I could have said you have great customer service. I wish that I could have seen the whole store. But most of all, I wish you wouldn’t have maced me when we walked in. Whatever “cologne” you airburst in the foyer of your store like napalm did the trick. My eyes still burn, and the several showers have failed to remove the stench of that biological weapon you dumped on me. I’ve smelled decaying carcasses that smelled more appetizing than that stuff. I guess I am either too old or too lame to enjoy that.

Oh well, I bet the emo people there would have just looked past me anyway. Or the 100-decibel rave music would have dropped me to the floor as my ears started to bleed. I guess that is why I am not your target audience. Thankfully, that is…

I am just so happy that I have finished all of my mall shopping for this year. You, too, can knock out your shopping and laugh at those still trudging off to the mall. Then join me as I point and snicker at those roving bands of people as I enjoy a pretzel and wonder where in the mall you can buy clothes like that, and more importantly, why?