Bad Advice and Other Reasons to go to the Mall

I recently discovered that a trip through the interior of the mall is 1.5 miles. Rock on. I love to shop. Exercise and shopping together? Am I the only one who hears angels singing?

Since part of the diet mandate is that you get 2000 calories worth of physical activity in a week, I can no longer have just a "pretend obsession" with working out. Because this diet.will.work. Am I making myself clear? So because I refuse to fail at this, I hit the mall for some mall walking. I did two full laps (three miles!). And along the way, I learned a lot.

A group of teenage boys was (were? Where are Mr. Christs' 8th Grade grammar lessons when I need them?) walking together. They were very respectful and dressed as well as can be expected from roughly fifteen year old boys. And by this I mean only one of them was sporting skinny jeans. Most women cannot pull this look off. Men should never, ever, under any circumstance whatsoever even make the effort to wear skinny jeans. Skinny legs on a man are simply, unequivocally, unattractive. I cannot be the only person who thinks this.

So these boys seemed sweet enough. And I thought, to myself "Oh, those are the kinds of boys my daughters might bring home some day." (Um, those better be the kinds of boys my daughters bring home some day. I'm not having anyone named "Snake" take my daughters anywhere on the back of a Harley.) And even though they didn't know me, I instantly felt like I knew them. Cuz I'm a freak show like that. But that's not the point. I started eavesdropping on their conversation. I was just curious what three 15 year old boys would talk about together. I didn't get much of the conversation, but it was clear that one of the three had a girlfriend and was dispensing love advice to his compadres. Nothing, I mean nothing, is more adorable than listening to a young boy, in love for the first time, giving terrible advice to his buddies about how to get a girl to date you. It was simply priceless. At one point in the conversation, he dealt out this gem: "If a girl buys a new pair of shoes, you have to go buy a new pair, too. To show her that you can keep up with her." It's terrible, terrible advice. But so cute. And I do have to give the kid major props for even noticing when a girl gets a new pair of shoes. Perhaps he's not so far off the mark after all.

As I took a pass around the upscale section of the mall (interesting how all malls seem to have this section now. The part with Lacoste, Free People, Coach, Gucci...recession? My ass.), I saw two young girls headed out of the Rheul store. I overheard the older of the two say to who I assume was her younger sister, "I couldn't find anything because I'm fat." Oh, how simply awful. I wanted to scoop the little girl (this shows my age, by the way. She was probably 16...) in my arms and tell her to never, ever talk about herself like that again.

Yes, yes...I know. I call myself a fatty all the time. But that's totally different. I'm not 16. My self esteem is not on the line here. Hi, I like totally love me. Not in an arrogant way. I have faults up the ying yang. I recognize them. Work on some of them. Some I just keep around because they amuse me. Like belching loudly on my back porch. The neighbors across the courtyard think I'm a pig. Eh. They're 80 and no fun. It's just a belch. And it's MY porch. Thank you very much. Which brings me to another one of my many faults--stubborn to the point of irritation. But that's OK. Stubbornness has it's perks, too. How else would I navigate this infertility nightmare if I wasn't too stubborn to give up?

But I digress. I wanted to scoop up that little girl, who, by the way, was only ever so slightly pudgy, and tell her to only talk about herself the way she wants others to talk about her. Never say anything about yourself you wouldn't want someone else to say about you. Because you have to be your own biggest fan is this world. This is a lesson I wish I had learned in 8th grade when the "Mean Girls" in my school told me they didn't want to be my friend anymore.

Let me back track. Growing up I was so painfully shy that I would pee my pants before raising my hand to ask to use the bathroom. I'm not sure how peeing my pants in class was less shameful that admitting I had to pee, but in my mind it really was. You can imagine that making friends was not easy for me. So when my parents moved us, for the 15th time in my short life, to a new school at the beginning of 8th grade, I was beyond thrilled when the "cool girls" befriended me about half way through the year. I'm not sure if it was the snazzy new hair cut (short, spiky crew cut) or the peach converse (It was the EIGHTIES, cut me some slack. I was freaking h-o-t), but something made them wan to be my friend. Could have been the fact that my algebra teacher got caught checking out my bra one day (I was blissfully unaware. I just wanted help balancing an equation). Whatever it was, I didn't care. I was ecstatic at being included. But like any good teenage angst movie, I wasn't going to be that girl who forgot the little people. Oh no. I was movin on up George and Weezy style, but I was not going to be "that girl". So I kept my old friends, too. I had some misguided notion that we could all be friends.

Turns out, we could not, in fact, all be friends. After a few weeks of dropping subtle hints that it was time for me to lose the losers, the 4 future reality TV stars who ruled the 8th grade lunchroom, started making plans without me. I took it in stride. After all, these were girls who had been friends for years before they met me. Of course it'll take time for them to include me in everything. I even offered up my family's VCR for a sleepover they were planning. Without me. (I'm not so bright, am I?) Turns out, I'm not very good at taking hints. I still hung around. Went to lunch with them. Picked them to be on my volleyball team in gym. Walked with them back from our high school classes (turns out being smart is actually cool. Who knew?). Until one day, as we walked to the buses, they told me "We're just not that into you. It's not you, it's us. We can still be friends, just not the kind who hang out. Or talk to each other. If we were looking for a committed friendship, you would totally be our type. But we just kind of want to play the field right now, and we don't really have room in our lives for another friend." It was my first break up and I was devastated. All this because I was nice?

You'd think after all of that, I'd be a raving bitch. But no. I just didn't have it in me. Oh, how times have changed. Because another thing I noticed at the mall were all the baby divas carrying expensive bags. I saw a girl, not old enough to be a the mall without her parents rocking a Pucci. Another one had a Coach. A third had a Target special in one hand...and a Lacoste bag bursting with $80 polo shirts in the other. Huh. I wonder where this recession is people have been talking about. Certainly not at the mall. So what does this have to do with me being a bitch? I wanted to walk up to each one of the offending children, remove the expensive items from their arms and hand them back to their parents with a suggestion that in the future, their money would be better spend in a college fund for little baby Paris. But I didn't do it. Doesn't that garner me some Karma points??

And perhaps the best thing about mall walking? Besides the food for my inner monologue? Cookie Monster.

Oh yeah, baby. Nothing says mall walking like a big blue Muppet. Man I love that.