It's a mad, mad world

Is it a sign of a feeble mind to latch on to a song by Tears for Fears in the un-ending sameness that is the inside of a mall? I walk around the giant mall I work next to and I'm always reminded of these words; "All around me are familiar faces/Worn out places, worn out faces/Bright and early for their daily races/Going nowhere, going nowhere."

I look at the store windows and there are so many ugly clothes that money can buy and think that it is just as well I don't really have all that much money, right now at least. Think of it; Grey leopard print tights, leopard print bra with underwiring hard enough to cut the soft skin that usually covers a woman’s ribs. Even if she has unfortunate taste in clothes, it is too harsh a punishment.

It is all rather absurd--the shiny floors of shops, the too-bright lights and the made-up salesgirls with the fake, glued-on, too-impossibly-thick caterpillar eyelashes and the for-sale signs and the everything-must-go loudness of the piped-in muzak that surrounds my head as it registers 'Made in China,’ 'Made in China' and ' Made in China ' labels all around the Disneyland wondering, wondering, wondering how many hours somebody worked to deliver this batch of clothes or those shoes and these bags and how much they got paid and what percentage mark-up and why am I wandering about here with my aching feet on ill-thought high heels when I won’t buy anything and what if I do buy that foxy grey top with the metal sequins that nobody over 25 should rightly attempt to wear, what would that choice make me? An easily-influenced, insecure woman who is responding excellently to all the advertisements that urge her to cling desperately to the vestiges of girlhood, that's what.

Turns out that maybe, just today, I know better than to be that woman. That's the great thing about growing older. Some of us really do get wiser, even if wisdom only strikes momentarily, like clear lightning, disappearing swiftly again into clouds of unreason.