It is never still in the Palisades Center. Every month, my family drives upstate to the mall to buy the next month’s groceries and whatever my mom sees is on sale. The journey to the Palisades Center has been a routine for as long as I can remember, but I have not gone upstate for years, since high school began to chip away at my free time. Today, Hunter has a holiday, and I accompany my parents for the first time since 10th grade. When I was younger, I shopped with my parents: crossing between stores, up and down escalators, never taking time to relax, for we were too busy with fulfilling the monthly shopping list. Today, the end of my junior year, is the first time I instead will sit down in mall’s Starbucks to work. With a laptop under one arm, and the next week’s homework in the other, I am prepared to make the most of my time. As my parents quickly hurry off, shopping list now in the “notes” section of their…show more content… While some purposefully strut to the stores, carefully avoiding the gauntlet of salesmen, others saunter, taking in the scene. Waddling in the shadows of her parents, a toddler struggles to contain her excitement for the bright storefronts. But not for long, and she takes off running. Pointing towards his map of the mall, a young boy leads his grandmother as they stroll through the mall, him looking towards the Gamestop, and her looking at a Bath and Bodyworks. A flock of middle school girls, dressed in sync with their queen bee, flaunt their shopping bags as they exit the mall. In the short time that I observe, it strikes me that the despite the countless archetypes in the world, they have all chosen the mall to occupy their weekend. Perhaps by chance they arrived at the mall together or perhaps by an unknown interpersonal force that they were drawn here. Just as in the Starbucks, these independent characters are the unknown cogs in a reaction system: the microcosm of the
