Some Kind of Monster

(Writer's note: Since my last entry was very sports heavy, this one will hopefully balance out the testosterone and estrogen in the blogosphere. This one is for you, ladies...)

Lets start with a simple SAT exercise.

Marge Simpson: Casinos :: My mother: ________
A) The Farmers Market
B) Garage Sales
C) The Mall
D) Church

In Season 5 of The Simpsons (don't ask me the episode number, I am too lazy to research this, and not a big enough nerd to know this off the top of my head), Mr. Burns opens a casino and Marge becomes addicted to gambling. Homer explains to Lisa that "The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws!" While this monster is obviously supposed to be an exageration, I do believe that there is something that takes over my mother the instant she walks into the mall. Once she enters those doors, you cannot be sure whether she'll ever walk out and if you are foolish enough to follow her, your life will also be in danger.

Now I know what you're thinking, "you hate shopping with your mom because you're a boy and you're exagerating." Not true. I have four sisters, all whom love to shop. They all can't stand shopping with my mom. They all have horror stories of losing her, my mom not meeting them at specified times (my mom wears a watch, by the way, so she really has no excuses), and my mom not answering her cell phone. It's really the thing that my sisters loathe the most when they're back home for the holidays.

Not that they've ever had it bad as me. At least they've never been told to stay in the car for "ten minutes" while my mom walked into Brookdale mall for about half an hour (would've been longer if it wasn't closing time) in the freezing Minnesota cold without a heater. I was probably five at the time and while this sounds totally barbaric, I think times were a bit different back then, so please don't call Social Services. I would never accuse my mom of being negligent, in fact, she's pretty much the opposite but that's another story (my first day of college).

So my sisters have all tried to devise ways to make shopping with my mom into an enjoyable experience. As far as I know, they've failed. When my mom was in Oregon (writers note: 0% sales tax is pretty sweet) visiting my sister, my sister lost her at the mall while going with her kids to pay for some earings. It turns out that my mom slipped in to a fitting room while my sister was gone, and you know, didn't call her to let her know or anything. My mom is a department store ninja.

My other sister has decided to accept my mother for who she is, with alterior motives. She goes shopping with Mom with full knowledge that the scene will play out like this: they will arrive at the mall, my mom will promise my sister they will only be there for a short while, my mom will say she's almost done when she's totally not, my sister will get frustrated and angry, and then my mom will buy her something to calm her down. My sister is thirty four years old.

I, on the otherhand, have decided to be creative about this dilemma. My theory is that you have to take my mom shopping somewhere that is foreign to her, and I don't just mean that you should take her to a mall she's never been to before. A lot of malls are designed pretty similarly (like if they're designed by the Westfield Company), it doesn't matter if they're indoor or outdoor, they have the same stores, and they all come with a map to help you find your way. They've designed to be convenient, to trap people like my mom, but not the shops on Melrose.

The shops on Melrose Ave. are just that, shops that are spread out on a street on Hollywood. there's no map, and this street stretches out for miles. There's no elevator or escalator (of course my mom is kind of scared of these), and no map. Heck, there's a good chance you don't know what half these stores sell until you walk inside. The stores are all one floor and they're much smaller than the a typical store in the mall. There are no department stores and usually these places charge you an arm and a leg because these are mostly speciality boutiques. I spent $275 yesterday and I don't even make that much money. You know, because I'm insecure.

So my plan is to take my mom to these shops on Melrose and to take her to some stores that I know she'd enjoy browsing at like the Marc Jacobs store. My mom is pretty afraid of Los Angeles in general so I don't think she'll wander off too far without me and since the shops are small, I should be able to recognize if she's making a break for the door. The tempo of the day should be controlled by the small amount of stock in the stores, and by the fact that we'll have to drive around a little bit. I think my plan will be successful though my sisters think that like all our other plans, this one will fail. I hope not, but if it does, I guess my mom will be buying me some new stuff to calm down so it's a win-win situation for me.