Just Hanging At The Mall...

Wednesday night I had some time to kill before our screenwriters group assembled.

So I decided to go to a mall.

I don't regularly go to malls. In the history of malls I'm not one who has spent a lot of time at those malls. The first mall I remember was Cottonwood Mall in Holliday, Utah. It's no longer there--it's been replaced by a big empty nothing, a field where the only things available are weeds.

I guess the 1980s were the malls' golden age, though I'm not a marketing expert so I can't be sure. Maybe I think that because I was a teenager in the 1980s. We moved from Holliday long ago and the the mall I probably spent the most time at in my life was in Layton, Utah. They built the Layton Hills Mall sometime in the 1970s, I believe. We'd go occasionally. My brother even worked there.

I also remember hearing how malls were basically evil. Their existence meant the death of "Main Street" and I suppose that's true, but then again, Main Street probably wasn't doing so well anyway and the malls simply filled a void of what customers wanted.

But, as it happens, things that rise must eventually come down. The dominance the malls once had has been replaced.

By the internet.

Again, I'm not an expert. It's just how I see things. Malls have adapted and changed, stumbled and clawed to keep the people coming through their doors. Walking through the doors of Valley Fair Mall the other night transported me back to those 1980s when girls and boys used to wander the halls looking for an adventure. Of course, things have changed. Thirty years ago, every other store sold jeans, not cellphone cases. But one store at Valley Fair Mall made me smile...it was an arcade with real-live video games. Haven't seen one of those in a mall in a long time.

It's amazing how memories can be triggered by just entering a building. That's what happened to me Wednesday night.