Mall-Mauled

DISCLAIMER: Before I even begin this morning, I just want to say that I hate it when certain individuals, who have recently returned from a fabulous trip overseas, start every conversation by mentioning their trip. I truly find such persons very boring.

Now that that's out of the way, let me say that I just returned from a fabulous trip to China. Remind me and I'll tell you all about it some day. While I enjoyed China, one thing that quickly got very tiresome was the way many of the merchants would come out into the street and virtually drag you back into their store.
While I don't appreciate that tactic, evidently it's paying off...so much so that many of these merchants have pulled up stakes and moved to America, where they immediately proceed to rent kiosks in the local malls.
I noticed the trend several months ago. It wasn't until I spent time in China (on my fabulous trip) that I realized where this practice comes from. Have you noticed that you can't walk through the mall these days without being accosted by those kiosk people. It happened to me just recently. I was walking through one of the local indoor malls, minding my own business. As I made my way through the kiosk maze, this little guy comes up to me and asks me to come look at some sort of toy.
I couldn't figure out what I'd done to make him think I had even the slightest bit of interest in looking at his toy. I was alone, no kids, and, as you may be surprised to learn, I'm well past 17. Why would I be interested in some stupid toy?
It was kind of neat actually. It was a truck that would do flips and keep on rolling. But, the point is, I hadn't encouraged him to approach me.
A friend of mine was in another mall in the Newport News area the other day, when a kiosk person drug her in to have her fingernails buffed. Apparently she stood there and let the woman buff her. It's a good thing the kiosk wasn't offering tattoos.
Now, I don't mind an aggressive sales clerk approaching me if I stop to look at his or her wares. If I go into Saphora, for example, I am not offended by one of their mimes approaching me and spraying stuff on me. I entered the store. Let the buyer (me, in this case) beware.
But those darned kiosks are everywhere. You can't get from point A to point B without passing them. In China (where I went two weeks on a fabulous trip), they'd tug on your arm and say, "Watchee, watchee." I stopped to watch, at first, not realizing they were trying to sell me one (a watch, that is). In the local malls, they tug on my sleeve wanting me to buy a Virginia ham, or a scarf that somehow can be folded to become about twenty five different articles of clothing, or a magic pen that writes in about 250 colors.
I don't want that stuff. I didn't even allow my peripheral vision to look at their merchandise. I don't like being manhandled in the mall.
Something else that I don't like in the shopping centers are the bell-ringers that are beginning to migrate into the area this time of year. Now, I admit, I enjoy Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol up to the point where Ebenezer Scrooge allows those appartitions to corrupt his way of thinking. And speaking of Christmas, how early in the year do those bell-ringers get started these days? Soon, there'll be Santa Clauses in swim suits for the malls big Fourth of July/Christmas sale.
I'm not against charities seeking donations. I'm a normal human. Cut me. I bleed. Well, don't literally cut me. But, I hate having a big bell rung in my face. The thing that really gets me is that if you even glance at these guys for an instant, they are able to give you this really sad, please-help-me expression. I almost feel guilty for passing them by.
And that incessant clanging. You can hear it in every store. I know that if I worked in the mall I'd go stark-raving mad within about two hours. Even now after I leave a shopping center where bell-ringers are at every entrance, my head is throbbing, my ears are tingling, and I'm unable to get that ding-dong sound out of my brain. As I left a shopping center the other day, I thought I recognized one of those bell-toting Santas. I thought to myself, "I can't think of his name, but his bell sure wrings my face."