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Eight Hours In The Ontario Mills Mall By Zach Seemayer After eight hours in the mall, the walls began to angle in at me. The storefronts looked like jeering faces, taunting me with their mundane architecture and malevolent, rabid consumerism. The halls I walked down, though bustling with shoppers, seemed devoid of intelligent life. I had spent the better part of my waking day trapped inside the California shopper’s Mecca, and it was starting to take its toll. The reason I needed to spend that much time at the Ontario Mills Mall is unimportant, let’s just say it had to do with my lack of a car and some bad scheduling. What is important is the knowledge I gained from watching shoppers in their natural habitat. To explain why a mall is so strange to me, I must first explain what kind of shopper I am: the necessity shopper. I only go shopping if I absolutely, positively need something. Otherwise, I am much more content with simply staying at home or going to the movies. I own clothes that I’ve worn for the better part of a decade. Most of the things I own I either got on Hollywood Blvd, in dingy little tourist shops, or I got them from relatives on my birthday or Christmas. So, wandering through the malls, I saw people clamoring for toys and clothes and movies and video games. I felt like Jane Goodall observing the apes. Not to say that all shoppers are primates, I am just unfamiliar with the environment. The Ontario Mills Mall is the largest, one-level shopping mall in Western North America; with over 200 stores and, according to one cute girl named Nissa who worked at one of the many retail booths spread throughout the halls, the mall is over a mile in circumference. It has a cyclical layout and is divided into 10 neighborhoods. I examined one of the map displays as I entered, and formed a battle plan for killing eight hours. Arriving at 10:30, only a half-hour after the shops opened, I was pleased to find that the place was not unbearably crowded. I didn’t realize that the only reason the population was bearable was because the throngs hadn’t yet arrived. As I walked in through entrance 1, I knew there was a GameWorks on the property, and I knew what my first destination had to be. I walked past the knife and cutlery pavilion and headed down quickly toward the arcade. When video games are involved, most other things in my life lose their importance quickly. As I walked through the large open doors of the arcade, I was struck by the radiating, pulsating heat of pure fun and energy that GameWorks, and it’s myriad of arcade consoles, produces. GameWorks operates using a plastic card, like a credit card, which is loaded with points, and each game costs different amounts. I spent $20 on 450 points and was ready to kick some digital butt. I approached the Time Crisis 3 game, in which you shoot at an army of nearly identical terrorist-villains. I was itching to play, but instead, there was a man in his forties wearing a white wife-beater, ratty jeans and cowboy boots, standing behind his toddler who wielded the plastic light-gun and was firing wildly at the baddies on the screen, all while his father cheered him on. Suddenly, I had a Dead Zone psychic moment where I looked 18 years into the future and saw this toddler, now 21, sitting on the front porch of his trailer with a double barrel shotgun and a bumper sticker on his pickup that read “Jeb Bush Jr. 2024.” I ended up leaving the arcade at around 1p.m. and headed over to the adjacent food court. Stocked with every sort of cuisine from Chinese to sloppy American to Italian, I felt like I was at the artery-clogging crossroads of the World. Settling on a rather delicious burrito, I sat at one of the tables in the vast food-court communal dining area, and pretended to read as I watched the people eat and shop and sometimes both at once. People stuffed food into their mouths as rapidly as possible in order to get back into that Adidas store. Immediately, the image of animals at a trough shot through my head, but dissipated quickly. After all, it’s not like I’m judgmental or anything. The day continued, with my hope for humanity dwindling quickly. I needed a pick-me-up, and I knew just where to find one: the Virgin Megastore. Nothing makes me feel better than being surrounded by great movies and wonderful music. It’s unfortunate that neither was overtly present in the store. I’m not entirely sure, but I think they were playing that single from the Paris Hilton CD, and I began to lose my cool. I looked at their display of “Hot New Releases” and the disappointment grew. Larry the Cable Guy, Health Inspector was not high on my list of amazing cinema. By the time 3 p.m. rolled around I still hadn’t done much with my time here. Game play and some food court people-watching had provided less entertainment that I hoped. There was little gleaned from my not-so-positive experiences in the Virgin Megastore. So, I decided to go on the hunt for a nice present to buy my girlfriend. I decided that, with 200 stores, there had to be a Bath and Bodyworks somewhere. I mean, they exist even in tiny malls with only 20 stores. It’s like a staple for shopping centers all across America. I was having difficultly finding a map of the mall. As I walked by a stand, selling what I could only guess was some sort of cleaning detergent, the employee, a young woman named Nissa, agreed to help me out. We talked as she led me to a map, telling me about some of the crazy people she had met while selling her mysterious product. I asked what it was, and she said it was for keeping clothes clean. Even though I didn’t fully understand what she was selling, I could tell what she wasn’t selling. “People come up to me and ask if I’m selling phones, or if I have fake snow, or if I sell custom hats or stickers,” said Nissa, as we continued our search for a map, “and I just look around at the cleaning supplies on my counter and wait for them to figure out that they’re stupid.” We found the map, and eventually, the Bath and Body Works. I thanked her and she went back to her stand as I made the half-mile long walk to the store I wanted. After getting what I needed, I exited only to discover that the Virgin Megastore has entrances on both sides; my anger rose as I realized that I could have walked 100 feet instead of 2,500. By now it was 4 p.m. and I was elated to realize that I only had two and a half hours left before my girlfriend showed up and I could be released from this mall, the third or possibly fourth level of hell. I saw no one wallowing in mud under the six watchful eyes of Cerberus for their evil gluttonous sins, but it still wasn’t very much fun. I decided to travel from store to store watching the consumers. It was terrifying. A fight nearly tore apart a KB Toys store over a fancy Barbie and some girl at a fashion store complained that the clothes were mislabeled a few sizes too small because “the last time I checked I was a size 6.” I guess the last time she had checked was 15 years ago. I went into one store and there was this disheveled man who had given the cashier a coupon for what he was buying. “Sir,” said the cashier to the seemingly unstable man, “we don’t give out coupons at this store. And you just wrote this on a piece of paper with a marker.” The man proceeded to accuse her of calling him a liar and demanding to see her manager. Finally, after hours of weird experiences, I felt like I was trapped in a Salvador Dali painting. My cell ringed and it echoed in my brain. Everything felt surreal. I answered it and the sweet, shining voice of my girlfriend emanated from the other line. Finally, the eight hours were up and I could go home. “Honey, I have some bad news,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to be about an hour late.”
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