Mall Sell

When I was little, I always thought how cool it was to have a job in a mall.

Naturally, this was after the time when I thought that tricycle drivers had it good just going about town, enjoying the city air. I changed my mind after I learned how to drive a motorcycle. At first, and in some parts until now, the breezing through the streets on a motorbike was worth it -- the wind in my hair, the weaving out of traffic, the independence of getting to decide where you wanted to go on a 20-peso tank of gas. But getting drenched in the rain and scorched by the searing heat can make you feel the drag on some days. So then, I thought, maybe a tricycle driver would be a career choice I could eliminate. An alternate career maybe, but definitely not the one I will choose to make a living on, if I can help it.

I love going to malls in all their air-conditioned glory. It's fun just looking into the glitzy windows, the spic and span floors, and all the goodies that lie around. I used to think how lucky the mall owners were and how rich you had to be to own one. I know I don't have that much money lying around but I thought that the people working in the mall had it good as well. Just chillaxing the day away, waiting for customers to come into the stores or just plying their trades in the coolness. The mall will always be my first choice as a hiding place if either a band of renegades or a horde of zombies take over the city.

I now get the chance of in a mall during certain days of the week. It's not the prime doctor job I'd always aspired to have, but at least it's something. It's something until I ponder my next life-changing move. A neurology fellowship? A cardiology fellowship? A pulmonology fellowship?

There are a lot of things that have been keeping me irrepressibly happy these days, but as I walk through the carefully clean tiled mall floors, I realize it's not all its cracked up to be as well. Gone is the luster and glitz of mall shop windows and replaced by sale signs and commercialism.

But it's probably mostly, that I need money to actually buy things, and money I don't have.

I will always love coming to malls to look around, and I will eventually get to the point of bringing my kid(s) here and having them run around, buying them shakes from the fruit shake stand, watch movies and buy toys.

But for now, curse you Malls! You're not the mall of my childhood dreams and your jobs are not the stuff of my legends.

I will turn myself into a gazillionaire and maybe the displays will beckon to me once again.

But I will be back...often.

Just to look...

Maybe...

For sure.