My last stop in PA was the King of Prussia mall, or “KOP” as the locals seem to call it. The mall is legendary for being the largest indoor shopping mall on the East Coast, so I wore my extra comfortable sneakers and I armed myself with debit cards for the best shopping experience of my life. In addition, the following day was both mother’s day and my mom’s birthday, so I was a man on a mission to find the best gift ever.
The mall seemed to be about 2300 miles long and could be considered its own province. It had everything–jewelry stores, food stores, houses, department stores, buick dealerships, doctors offices, factories, etc. I walked around for about four hours and went into about 50 stores, but when I checked the building’s layout I saw that I had only conquered about 10% of the mall. This might take days.
In a fit of desperation and shopping rage, I went into Tiffany & Co, and I quickly chose a necklace for my momma. My sister, who accompanied me on the trip, said some girly thing like, “how can you buy the chain without buying the matching bracelet,” so I was suckered into buying the bracelet too. The wallet definitely hasn’t suffered a blow that large since 2001, when I discovered how ebay works and accidently bought a 1994 Chevy Corsica.
I took the two “perfect” boxes with the “perfect” bag and walked out of the “perfect” store. I was tired of spending money, so I decided to leave the mall. It took about 45 minutes, a compass, and a topographic map to find out where I parked and an additional 45 minutes to navigate there. I drove out of the unnecessarily huge mall’s parking lot and made a personal vow to myself never to return, unless my entrance to heaven was contingent upon my ability to locate a place where a person could buy a horse, a volkswagen and a 802.11n wireless router under one roof.