It's 9am.  Do you know where your parents are?

This morning I dropped Yasmin off at school.  She needed to provide a white cotton t-shirt, and white cotton pants to tie-dye for a play that they are doing in the spring.  We had the shirt already, but we didn't have the pants.  So, after I dropped her off at school, I headed over to the mall to pick up a simple pair of pants for the sacrificial dying.

Well, let me tell you.  First of all, the mall doesn't open until 9:30.  This is the Bellevue Square Mall.  This is where the mundane and marvelous begins.  In the entirety of this immense mall complex, there is absolutely nothing open other than the StarBucks of course.  But, there are a ton of people here!  What are they all doing?  Just kind of wandering around? 

I think the mall must have opened its doors around 7am or something, or at least by 8am.  There's all sorts of stuff going on in there already.  First are the seniors.  When you and I look at a mall, we typically find it to be a place to get stuff.  Lots of shops from A to Z.  You find what you want, you get it, you get out.  At least that's my method.  But, when the mall is mostly devoid of people, it's not just a place to shop, it's a race track!  It's a gym, it's a hot social scene for those who actually get up really early in the morning and have already paid their penance in life so they can do other things.

Think about it.  There are stairs (the escalators aren't turned on until 9:30am).  There are plenty of walkways, with turns.  You can make circuits around blocks of stores, lap your peers, hold entire races.  The seniors are out in force, and before the mall even opens, they've already done their 5 miles of walking, in the comfort of the indoors, rain or shine. 

And, of course, as they are finishing up their exercise for the day, the mall is opening up, so they can sit down to a bagel and some coffee and chat with their friends... “Oh, you had me there around the Disney store.  But I came on strong because I had a goal to catch you by the Sbarro”... “By the way, did you see the sale going on over at the Bon?... Nah, I detoured around Radio Shack, and took the GNC bypass“.

I kid you not.

And that's not all.  Mommies are out in force as well.  I think I saw at least two toddler contingencies of 20 women apiece.  They are there, stretching, walking, playing with their kids on the oversized mall toys.  It's a veritable playground.  The mommies are exercising, the kiddies are socializing, and the seniors, when they're not zooming past, and putting in their “goochy goochy goos”.

I remember the first time I ever experienced mall marauders.  It was in Arizona about 8 years ago.  I didn't know what to make of it.  I thought it was unique to AZ because of the heat.  But, here it is again in Bellevue, and I'm sure it's going on all across this nation.

It's great.  There's a whole scene out there hidden behind the walls of this great institution of Americana.  Whole societies form and evolve while people like me, oblivious, go on about our business trying to think up things that these people should be using.

Life is marvelous, and the mall marchers prove the point.

I did get the pants (JC Penny doesn't have them, but the Bon Marche did, at $24!).  Next time I might go to Target or Mervyns, or Fred Myer's, or Sears, but if I had done that today, I would have missed the marauders, and that trip was worth the trip.