We have all gone through this… Either your friends ask you to come along, or you pass by one on your way home. Some magical, powerful, all-encompassing force draws you in and next thing you know, you either regret everything you just did and can’t wait to come again, or you love the past couple of hours and can’t wait to go at it again… But no matter what, in those couple of hours your mind sounded something like…
4:00 pm: The mall? Sure… I can just take a look around… and I do need to buy a present for my best friend… Sure. Let’s go.
4:30 pm: Ugh why is parking so hard to find? Some people are such idiots. No one will notice that my car takes up one and a half lanes, right?
4:35 pm: Okay, here we go. Just window shop! You’re a college student, you can barely afford your weekly ramen noodles, there is no way you can afford – oooh is that Forever 21? I’ll just take a look around…
4:45: I like this skirt. Ooh and this bag. No, don’t do this to yourself… Well if I buy the dress and skirt for myself as an early birthday present, and the bag for my friend, then technically I’m not doing anything wrong. I have about $50 on me, I can afford this. Yeah, let’s do this.
5:00: Ah, that felt good. Okay now let’s stick with window shopping. Hmm… What smells so good? I must be near the food court
5:07: Oh my God, have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life?
5:10: I can’t get anything, all my hard work at the gym this semester will have gone to waste!
5:11: I’ll get small a drink, and a soft pretzel I need my mall chow! Wait is that Chinese food? I am kind of hungry… And hey six bucks for a plate of any three dishes I want? Totally reasonable! I didn’t work out that hard anyway
5:20: I look really creepy sitting here by myself. Hey kid what are you looking at? Never seen a twenty year old chow down on Chinese food?
5:35: Now that I can think clearly, I can focus on window shopping. But first, ice cream!
5:40: Chocolate chip isn’t that bad for you, right?
5:50: Okay girl, no more food.
6:00: That ATM is calling my name… You know that if you don’t use cash you won’t be able to keep track of your spending and you’ll go crazy… Wait what spending. You’re not buying anything else, right?
6:05: Oooh! A Disney store! AND there’s an ATM right outside!? Destiny. Girl don’t fight it. It’s destiny. I’ll just withdraw $30… Maybe $40…
6:15: I want to buy all the stuffed animals in this store. And that Elsa dress. And the figurine sets. I can pretend these are all for my nieces. Psh, I don’t have a niece. But the saleslady doesn’t need to know that.
6:25: Window shopping. Window shopping.
6:40: I can just stop by Bath and Body Works. You can’t window shop smells.
6:50: Don’t have enough cash on me to get these lotions and candle, I’ll use my card just this once…
8:00: Oh. My. God. What did I do? Last thing I remember is Bath and Body works! Then… I think Express was having a sale… And so was Macy’s… And I don’t know what happened at Lush… The saleslady said I needed a good moisturizer. And to be fair, that scarf in the window of Easy Pickins was calling my name. So where did the rest of these bags come from?
8:10: I’ll take it all back tomorrow.
And you never do… But hey, everyone deserves an occasional shopping spree.