RETAIL PRISON

I was dreaming. In this dream, the police come out of nowhere and grab me. I am in my underwear of course. They accuse me of a crime I didn't commit. Nevertheless, before you know it, I am set before a judge and jury and convicted to life in prison. The bailiff puts his hand on my shoulder to take me to jail for the rest of my days and says, "Honey wakeup, it's time to go to the mall." What? I rub my eyes and realize it is my wife rousing me for a Saturday of shopping at the mall. It's the week before Christmas.

Have I awoke from a nightmare or awoke TO one?

If shopping (to men) is like visiting the dentist, shopping in the mall is root canal. Shopping in the mall on a Saturday a week before Christmas is Sir Laurence Olivier in "Marathon Man," drilling a hole through Dustin Hoffman's front tooth.

"Is it safe?" my wife whispers.

As I have spent many a crowded Yule time Saturday at the mall, a better analogy is: it's a lot like prison. As you enter both places, the doors automatically open in front of you. I wince as I hear the doors behind me slide together, signaling my incarceration with thousands of violent, insolent, yet red and green clad rogues. At prison on your way in, you have to hand all your possessions over, so you spend your time there with nothing. At the mall during Christmas time, it is on your way out that you leave all your wealth behind.

As I walk the wide corridor of the mall, I look left and right into the ornamented stores as I pass; seeing other prisoners in their cells, trying on a sport coat or holding a wife's purse. In my mind I see Santa as a prison guard, walking the corridors dragging his candy cane decorated Billy Club along the bars. I think how in prison, at the designated time, all the security gates open simultaneously to let the prisoners out of their cramped cubicles. I smirk as I think, in the mall, at Christmas time, all the security gates open and the people rush INTO the cubicles.

In recent years, malls have made themselves more penitentiary-like with their food courts imitating a typical prison mess hall. Masses of people funnel into one area to eat inferior, tasteless food, all the while sitting at the most uncomfortable tables in an environment devoid of humanity. I think I hear a harmonica. I watch as people lean protectively over their fries and burgers as though someone is going to stick a shiff in them for their lunch.

As I trek further along the twinkling aisleways, sometimes pushed, sometimes pulled, I see a man being walked around in leg irons. I realize he is just in "PayLess" trying on some of those shoes that are held together with plastic anti-separation ties. The walk is just the same though; short, gilded, with a total lack of dignity.

Using a restroom in the mall is about as humiliating as in a prison. Though the mall toilet is not in the middle of a room without partitions for privacy, you still get the feeling you are being watched. Yet, I don't think it was the warden's eyeball I saw peering through that vertical opening along the door of my stall. Even the toughest of prison guys would have even been impressed with my territorial defense techniques. With a brisk cough to alert the peeper of my dominion, I followed with a brisk, "Someone's in here!!"

It was nice on this crowded, festive day to finally find a bench open to rest my weary body. I even got a little nap. Then I woke up suddenly to a loud buzzing noise. "Get up, it's a bed check," Snake whispered, scampering about. I rubbed my eyes and focused on my metal bed and then on my cell mate. "Man," I said, "You wouldn't believe the nightmare I just had."

Billy Murphy -- 12/5/97