Amateur Megalomania

This post is essentially pointless, but I’ve invested enough time in it to feel like I should post it. You’ve been warned.

I woke up on Saturday with the overwhelming need to avoid housework. I’ve found the best method to achieve such avoidance is absence from the house. Given that the weekends are usually devoted to family time, the only way to vacate the house is with the family in tow.

“So, beloved wife of mine, where would you like to go today?”

“You avoiding housework?”

Who’s to say that the years don’t enhance the mysteries of love?

Fortunately for me, I had the good sense early on to fixate on a woman who shares my occasional embrace of sloth (note I said ‘occasional’, those that know me well can maintain the privacy of your own opinions).

So we packed up the family, spun the figurative Wheel of Destiny, and headed out in a semi-random direction. Today’s destination was Calumet City, just south of Chicago and a good 120 miles away.

Why?

Well, when we take these trips, we have a few guiding parameters. There is no real goal, as in an accomplishment, that must be checked off at the end of the day’s trip. We simply go and return, burning a day, accumulating some experience, and generally gorging on junk food. Our requirements are simple: we must have the ability to walk the kids in a cool environment, entertain ourselves, and dine.

Therefore, random shopping malls serve as the targets of these trips.

Yeah, it isn’t very poetic. We aren’t seeing the grandeur and glory of the land (except what passes by our windows at 70MPH). We usually don’t see Wondrous Sights, or pose awkwardly in front of Notable Landmarks of Obscurity. We just go, walk, look at people, shop, eat and return.

It kills a day.

Calumet City was chosen thusly: we hadn’t been there, and it was within our travel radius (barely). I scanned the Microsoft Streets and Trips for Shopping, located what appeared to be a large mall, went over the Google maps and examined the satellite image to verify the size, density of retail, and traffic. The particular mall in question (which I shall not name) seemed to have enough ‘size’ to occupy us for long enough to make the trip worthwhile.

But there is a science to these things. The ultimate determination of value was the Barnes and Noble search. A quick check revealed a store within spitting distance. This is a certain indicator of civilization. Wherever B&N roots, commerce is sure to be found.

Learning to travel with two young children is an exercise in patience, and I am still learning even today. One must resign one’s self to short intervals of travel. There is little sense in the single Large Stop of Supply (TM) of our childless days. You know what I’m talking about – you pull off the road and stock the vehicle with food, drink, gas, entertainment options, and then urinate as if you expect another birthday to pass before you again set foot outside of the vehicle. Those days are past.

Now, we grab whatever is handy, then move on, knowing for certain that the children will require another stop before you reach the bottom of your 16 oz Diet Coke. Forget something vital? Don’t worry, you’ll have another shot at the next exit. Don’t try to do a time study on the trip. Don’t think in miles per hour. Find that zen state where motion is motion, and non-motion is non-motion, and no judgment can be made about either state. You are where you are, and you will be where you will be.

Parenting can be about ambivalence. At least for parents that wish to remain sane.

Anyway, we stopped at a random McDonald’s. I don’t like feeding my kids McDonald’s often. Not because I have any deep seated Big Fast Food angst, or latent anti-capitalism, nor am I really concerned about the nutritional value of the occasional cheeseburger in my three year old.

I’m afraid my kids like it.

And then occasional isn’t occasional anymore. Suddenly my kids will jiggle when they walk, or start breathing heavy when they stack blocks.

My parents just bought my oldest a huge play kitchen set, complete with counters, plastic appliances, overhead light, play sink and enough dishes to host a two foot tall Thanksgiving. I have fears of my kids stacking up pretend-dirty dishes in the pretend sink, staring at a pretend-dirty stove top, and saying ‘Screw it, let’s eat out.’

But on the travel days, McDonald’s is acceptable. The kids begin that charming signal of hunger (shrieking rage), and I laconically pull over at the next suitable exit. The great thing about America (at least one of the great things, I’ll explore more as this entry continues), is the density of McDonald’s per square foot is approaching unity. Pull over anywhere, and you should be able to see one nearby.

Unfortunately for us, this particular McDonald’s seemed to be busy.

The store was mobbed by three bus-loads of teens all wearing t-shirts proclaiming their affiliation with some organization that reveres the practice of silk-screening large depictions of native American chiefs on their shirts while simultaneously radiating almost palpable indifference (the jaded variety). It is fascinating to watch, really. You have a group of kids, dressed identically, out on some massive Saturday activity, while individually these same kids would probably throw rocks at any other kids lame enough to be out in a large, identically dressed group on a Saturday. They all shared that embarrassment I imagine will occur on the day after the Rapture. You know: all the pious and faithful vanish from the earth, while those Left Behind (TM) shuffle around, chagrined to actually be Left Behind (TM). “Bob? I thought you were pious?” “Yeah, well…shuddup!”.

Other than the mob of kids and the dead-eyed thousand-yard-stare from the counter employees under a siege that never seemed to end, there was one notable observation worth relating. McDonald’s is now selling chocolate dipped soft serve ice cream cones. Now as a kid, I learned by wretched experience that soft serve cones were non-invertible. The ice cream-cone interface was insufficient to cope with one gee. You simply didn’t invert your cone, ever. Then at some point in my childhood, dipping soft serve cones in a variety of toppings became the rage. Kids would walk around with these anti-grav cones, upsetting all expectations of how the world worked. It freaked me out.

To this day, I can’t order one, and when I see them being made, I sense a wrongness in the world. I don’t trust people who can pull it off.

So it warmed my heart to watch this poor counter clerk make three attempts at producing a chocolate dipped cone. Each time, she came away with an empty cone and had to go fishing for an ice cream iceberg afloat on a chocolate sea. She was an honest person.

There isn’t much to be said for Calumet City and the mall in question. Ariel views do little to assess the economic strata of a region. I’m no snob, but I’d rather not spend the day in the urban equivalent of the old appliance rusting in the yard or car on cement blocks cliche. My unease was confirmed when I approached a very nice lady at the information desk at the middle of the mall.

“Excuse me, my family and I drove over from Kalamazoo just to get away for the day, and we were looking for other shopping in the area after we exhaust this place.”

Her face brightened a bit but her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Cut your losses and go.” She then followed up with detailed directions to a better place within ten miles.

We didn’t dawdle.

I knew we were entering a better area when I saw an imposing, faux-Old-World building looming beside the boulevard: Smithe Furniture. The extra ‘E’ is for Expen$ive. I imagined a team of ancient artisans rendering furniture from the finest raw materials, still referring to America as ‘The Colonies’ and pining for the days of absolute monarchy. It just looked like the place where you might be greeted by a man in a powdered wig.

Sadly, the illusion shattered when I later I googled the store.

We were truly back to civilization. I could see the Standard Retail Arrangement; Home Depot, Lowes, Kohls, Barnes and Noble, Target, Wal-Mart, as well as the constellation of lesser stores frequently found in orbit around these behemoths. Some people bemoan the homogenization of the American town. I find it comforting. Certainly there is something to be said about novelty or character, but all too often character in America was defined as some rotting, sub-standard ‘country’ restaurant and a run-down general store that had a lot of nothing. I like the idea that regardless of where I find myself, I could go by a compression fitting for a kitchen sink should I need one (and boy, do I need one on occasion).

Which leads to the American Shopping Experience. I’m not very old (36…ish). I remember pre-internet when if you couldn’t find something in a local store, you had little chance of getting before the standard 4-6 weeks of mail order, and even that was hit and miss. There were times when I didn’t even know products existed, let alone understand that I needed it (which might be another commentary on where we are as a people, but this post grows long). As a youth, I had proper expectations of what I would find in any particular store.

Jump back several weeks with me: I’m at my folk’s house in Toledo. It is Friday night, 11 PM, and I’m at the brand new Kroger grocery store down the road. I swing by the computer supply section and spend a few minutes looking for cheap but good web-cam for my parent’s computer. There I stand, annoyed and irritated that they don’t carry web-cams…in a grocery store.

That’s when I realized I had lost perspective.

American commerce has spoiled us. We expect to find everything, all the time, and for cheap. We expect a gourmet coffee in under two minutes, fast food without letting the wheels stop rolling in the drive-thru, and a fine meal in under thirty minutes. We expect to be able to find an obscure plastic valve for a fifteen year old engine within seconds of walking into an auto-part store, and we aren’t paying more than $2 for it. Products with razor-thin profit margins must be stocked for our convenience at every street intersection, or we are annoyed.

What’s wrong with that? Americans sell things. We’re good at it. So we should have high demands as consumers. If some activist group thinks that our Big Box Store addiction is hurting someone in Paraguay, well, they are free to try to make their case.

I’m busy stocking up on ‘AA’ batteries, 100 for $25. And then I’m probably going to throw them away, in a landfill. And continue to drive two hundred miles, round trip, just to entertain myself.

It’s what I do.

Filed under: Grab Bag