Power Outage

Our electricity was off because of a scheduled power outage.  I used the time to run errands.  I needed essentials—beer, wine, and insulin syringes.  I like to be mellow when I shoot up.

Necessary stuff taken care of, it was time to do something pointless, time to go to the mall.  The mall in this case is Sacramento’s Arden Fair Mall, two levels containing 165 retail tenants.  The mall’s website says it’s more than 1,100,000 square feet big.  A million square feet! 

But a million square feet is small footage compared to malls in Asia that are three to four times that size.  Somebody has probably written a book about super-sized malls, but I wondered if anyone has compared any of the malls to classic structures such as India's Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Roman Colosseum. If anyone has tried to elevate the shopping mall to timeless architectural status, I didn’t find a reference to it.  Moreover, some sort of record should survive so that people of the future will know that we are the era responsible for shopping malls, large dams, small electronics, and nuclear weapons.

Going to a mall is pointless for me because I don’t have the shopping gene.  Maybe I was born without it, or maybe it spun out of my system somewhere along the way.  I suppose a proper shopping gene could have been injected at some point, but it wasn’t, and I remain genetically unmodified, a non-GMO generic old man.

But I had time to kill until the power at home came back on, and my hunger gene pleaded for something to eat.  We, the hunger gene and I, went to the mall and into the food court.  Here is proof that there are no shortages of fat and sugar.  Rationalizing my choice on the knowledge that my blood sugar sags late in the morning and needs a pick-me-up, the kamikaze diabetic in me ordered a hot dog on a stick and a lemonade.  More than just a hot dog and a splinter, the whole creation is dipped in batter and deep-fat-fried so that it looks like what it is, a cocoon filled with carbs.

Then, something miraculous happened:  My phone rang!  In two years of owning a cell phone, this was only the second or third time I’d received a call on it.  That’s the result of deliberate use.  My wife and I got cell phones as backups for our intermittent land line, and we gave our cell numbers to very few people.

Actually, my phone didn’t ring but vibrated, which it was set to do.  I could feel it through the fabric of the pocket.  The vibration was quiet; no bystander would be distracted.  (All things that vibrate are not the same.  Just think of what kind of story you could write if you were in a crowded mall and saw a geezer with a vibrator.)  

Answering it would have to wait.  The food court was packed with noisy people, and I was enjoying a delicious repast of a hot dog on a stick and lemonade.

And, another miracle happened:  My phone vibrated—again!  A different caller this time. 

That was enough.  A trip to the mall and two phone calls was a good morning’s work.  I went home and lay down to experience my own personal power outage.

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