AT HOPE & MAIN: RULES FOR SHOPPING WITH TEENS

The mall became a reality, a buzzword on everyone's lips, in about 1975. Before that our town existed with the Mom & Pop stores, a few large department stores, and easy access to "malls" in nearby towns. The malls in those nearby towns weren't originally intended to be malls. They became malls simply by enclosing a group of stores with a roof and filling in the necessary holes. For us, they were a real treat to visit. You had so much selection, all within a short walking distance. I didn't care much for fashion, but visiting there was interesting. At age seven or eight, just taking in all the colorful displays and smells from perfume counters and food was an amusement in itself.

When the plan to build a mall came to our town, there were mixed reactions. Taxes, real estate going up, traffic ... these were a few of the considerations on people's minds.

The site upon which the shopping mecca was built, quite ironically, was a dump. Seriously. It was a junkyard surrounded by a vast empty lot. The memory of this site is surely an ugly one.

The mall took quite a while to build and when it opened, we wondered how we ever existed without it. It became a hangout for teen-agers. In the center was a big fountain; this is where you met your friends. Some kids had money to spend, but most of us just had bus fare and enough for a soda and maybe a snack. You could buy pizza by the slice, and with a soda, your lunch was somewhere in the neighborhood of a buck.

The mall was open for a couple of years before I actually began to shop there on my own. As kids we did a lot of window shopping, that was amusement in and of itself.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, and my views on shopping have changed considerably. I imagine it still would be an amusement if money wasn't an object.

Somehow I've survived another shopping expedition. I attribute the event's success with the pleasantness of the weather. Not only was the weather cool, it was even breezy. Any heavy-duty shopper knows that the job, if done with proper enthusiasm, always makes you break a sweat. Especially on sale days.

Some people actually love shopping. I, for one, do not. With the amount of money spent and not having a clue as to how much things cost, my husband thinks I love shopping. He couldn't be more wrong. If I didn't have to pay postage, I'd mail order everything.

Four shopping expeditions per year is my limit. Waiting for children to try it on or trying it on yourself, is work. Rhetorical questions like "why don't they have this in my size?" or "why can't I have leopard skin pants that appear to have only pour-in fitability?" are to be expected when you go shopping with a teen-ager, but there ought to be a limit. And there is.

Rule No. 1 is, if you find it necessary to continue to ask the same questions to which you already know the answers, we go home. This is self-preservation. I can't afford to lose my sanity since I still have to drive the car home.

Rule No. 2 is: if it isn't within Mom's price range, don't try to wear me down or we'll leave. I refuse to pay ten times what the item is worth just so I can give the designer free advertising. You'll either have to sacrifice and get less or choose something different. I refuse to be strong-armed into anything.

Having survived quite a few shopping expeditions, some of which could be renamed shopping battles, I've learned to compromise some principles. Never having been a slave to fashion myself, it was, and still is, difficult to succumb to what's in style rather than what's in the closet and perfectly wearable. Right or wrong, like it or not, a lot of "books" in public schools are judged by their covers. I refuse to make my kid's lives miserable just to get a bargain. Instead, I choose to be a sales hound. It's the only way. I simply can't afford to pay full price for any wardrobe.

Now, my rhetorical questions for shopping malls: "Why can't shopping baskets be provided?" I tend to buy a lot at one time and carrying all that stuff around wears me out. I'd probably stay longer and spend more if I had this small convenience.

My second and last rhetorical question is: "Why is no seating provided within stores that have ample space?" Some fine boutiques have seating available. It can make the event almost pleasurable instead of a necessary evil. My dogs are killing me after about an hour and, excuse me for being a wimp, but, I would stay longer and spend more if a place to sit down was provided.