I’ve got to come clean before I start my rant.  I’ve never really liked going to the mall.  Even as a younger man (OK, hit the geezer alert now), trips to the mall took more out of me than they were worth.  After about ten minutes I could feel the good vibes just draining out of my body as if each kiosk or new age fashion store were some form of energy magnet.

Well I had occasion to swing by the mall this week and I began to feel like I needed a transfusion.  You see I had a mission, a real purpose, a specific reason for going into the mall.  But I also had about thirty minutes to kill before my next appointment.  As I strolled between the moccasin kiosk and the man selling smokeless cigarettes, I started to notice some bad feelings and so I consciously tried to do something about it.

I put my personal consumer hat on and looked at each store with an open mind.  I was deliberate in asking myself questions like:  Would that store have something I was really looking for?  Could there be something here that would make me want to blow the dust off my wallet?  Invariably, the answer was no.  I was getting to the point where even the Apple Store was not appealing.

As I was racing ever faster into the valley of despair and preparing for a bad case of malaise (a general feeling of discomfort brought on by too much time in the mall), I stumbled upon a Borders.  I’d rather it had been one of the “10 Coolest Bookstores in America” but it did the trick.

After a stiff cup of Joe and the purchase of two books on Italian travel, a serious case of malaise was avoided and my 3pm meeting went off without a hitch.

Thank God for coffee and bookstores.