A mall: to arms!

I'm no good in a mall. I'm too bothered by the crowds and too much the person they hope I'll turn into when pushing through the heavy glass doors and into the blast of heat and frenzy and commerce.

Like the esteemed local paper writer, I am too easily seduced. I am a sucker for illusion, never sure which shell hides the ball. I gasp in initial delight as the man in sequins saws my money in half, and line up to watch it happen again. They roll me and roll me again, depositing me at my door with an armload of things I didn't need.

How else can I explain the fact that I have a serving platter? I'm a recluse. Ask anyone. I never entertain. A sadly significant portion of the food I eat requires something called a "crisping sleeve" to properly prepare itself in the microwave oven. And yet I have a serving platter. I keep it in the oven, because in addition to not needing this item, I also have no room for it.

When it comes to gift-giving, I try to be creative and think about the person I'm shopping for. I don't like to give something out of duty. I also don't like to receive something that feels like it was bought in this spirit. Most of the time, I can think up something that I'd like to bestow on someone.

Unless I hit the mall. Once inside the orgiastic climate and the frenzy and the noise and the people people people, I feel so much like recoiling all the way home that I convince myself that the thing to do is to buy a gift for every person on my list as rapidly as possible so that I do not have to repeat this experience. This is the origin of nearly every crappy gift I have ever given.

Sometimes I just open my wallet wide, pointed away from me, and let the bills flutter out. Freeing them into what seems like their natural habitat. I watch them settle on something, and take it home.

Or I wander with my eyes and mouth wide open, gaping and gawking and grasping at the sheer quantity of merchandise. I discover I have the attention-span of a squirrel.

Watching most people shop is like watching a morbidly obese man eating, fascinating and a little sad. I doubt I am any different in this regard.

So this year, I have done nearly 100% of my shopping online. No one has shoved me aside, or taken the last of the item I'm contemplating from my hands.

I had to scale back significantly this year, as I no longer have the kind of money I used to, and the online experience has helped there, too. In person, I have a tendency to buy a couple of things for the same person, figuring I'll decide what to give them and what to keep or give to someone else at a later time. Obviously, this is not frugal. I have not done this at all this year.

With the help of the internet, I can now blow money unnecessarily on things like cds, books and dvds without becoming distracted by kitchen gadgetry. I already have three different options for making coffee, and that's way more than I need.

Anyway, back to the malls: when I used to do Xmas shopping in them, I would find myself the source of a slowly building rage. Something inside me would change, and I would glower uncontrollably at the special savings, the incessant blinking lights and garland draped from every available surface, the perky high-school kids charged with roping the rubberneckers into a sale using tactics eerily similar to carnival barkers.

I used to have to find the inevitable arcade and blow a few dollars on one of those ultra-violent fighting games (like Mortal Kombat) where I could inflict great bodily harm on others without facing charges.

Once, as I tore the heart from inside my opponent's chest, I screamed "Do you have that sweater in oatmeal NOW, you condescending bastard? It's for my mom!"

OK, not really.