just humor

For a people-watcher like me, living in Florida is a dream come true. This is the World Series of people watching. Only in Florida will you see an 80-year-old woman in a bikini, and a 90-year-old man in a Speedo; dogs wearing clothes and accessories, and humans wearing dog collars and leashes (although I saw one of these in Phoenix once, too, and the get-up was so kinky that I haven’t felt the same about the Southwest since). And you’ll see more untucked Hawaiian shirts over beer bellies than anywhere, including Hawaii.

The people watching is so good, in fact, that I’ve begun doing themes and games. I’m considering my own late-night cable TV game show called Watch That Florida Person! but it might involve staying up past 10 p.m. and I’m not sure I could handle that.

So just to stay in practice, I play it with myself. You can try this at your own mall or amusement park or car wash. Pick a theme and park yourself in the food court or another crowded place (like far away from the kiosk guy who is operating a remote-control helicopter, since people avoid him like the plague) , and look for people who fit your theme.

Here are some suggestions that I’ve found to be fun and profitable:

Mismatched Couples
Some couples start to look like each other after a few years of being happily married, some people are just wrong for each other, and some people start to look like their pets. But for this game, let’s concentrate on No. 2. The tall girl with a little butterball boyfriend, the princess with the kid who barely passed power mechanics, the nerdy guy with the beautiful blond cheerleader, you’ve seen them. Collect them all!

Girlfriend or Daughter/Boyfriend or Son?
Once, at my daughter’s basketball game, one of the moms was sitting across the way with what appeared to be her older son, maybe a guy who had just finished college and was home to visit mom and see li’l sis shoot some hoops, and, oh wait, why is this boy putting his hand on his mom’s knee? And . . . and . . . oh god, why is Mom putting her lips on his neck. GAH! Yeah, as it turns out, it wasn’t her son, it was her new boyfriend. Here in Florida, you see a lot of that. And you see even more old guys with young blond girls who are younger than their daughters. This is a fun game to play at the mall, but don’t think about it too much or you’ll lose your food court lunch.

Plastic or Real?
This one would be perfect for a competition between you and a friend or neighbor, except that a definitive answer would require asking strangers, “Are those real?” Feel free to play it anyway and just make up the answers. Plastic surgery is as common as eyeliner is up north, so you’re going to find that plastic is the correct answer more often than not. I’ve seen women in the grocery store with face and body parts so swollen, I’m pretty sure they’re on their way home from their appointments. Either that or they’ve been beaten by an angry spouse.

Cover That Up!
I’m torn about this one. On one hand, when I see an older, overweight woman wearing a bathing suit that is any more revealing than a wet suit, I go ew. But on the other hand, a part of me says you go girl. If I squint enough so that the tattoos disappear - they just seem incongruous with the whole my-body-is-beautiful-the-way-God-made-it thing - a normal looking woman really is very normal looking. And I love to see people showing off their high self-esteem. But there are bodies that really do just need to be told, Cover that up! For this game, be sure not to say it aloud. People with high self-esteem are often very strong.

For a lame shopper like me, our trip to the sixth largest mall in America this week was overwhelming to say the least.

I went with a carload of friends and relatives to Sawgrass Mills Mall - my first visit to the legendary outlet-heavy shopping mecca of South Florida. Wikipedia says it’s the sixth largest mall in the country. Which means it’s like the Phoenix of shopping malls (or Philadelphia, depending on who’s winning that race today . . . Oh wait, some crazy Arizonan just left the door unlocked and one of his wives escaped; Philly takes it.)

Sixth largest? Really? That means there are five other malls in this country that are larger? I’m having a hard time with that.

The largest mall in the country is the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. The Mall of America in Minnesota is #2, but it has the most stores with 522. I’m wondering if they counted the kiosks.

And speaking of kiosks, the wandering minstrels that walk around the Sawgrass Mills Mall selling their wares and trying to run hand cream down our pores rank No. 1 in being obnoxious.

Attention wandering minstrels: Report back to your kiosks immediately. Look at yourself in those little mirrors you have and write in lipstick 100 times: I will not accost innocent people and say things that make them feel unattractive and make them wish they had gone to Walmart instead.

One wandering minstrel hijacked my daughter’s shopping experience and kept lowering the price of a fingernail treatment until my previously nice daughter said, “I don’t want it” whereupon the minstrel got snippy and mean.

And when I tried to politely ignore one, he turned to his partner and said: “She’s from Canada.” (Is that bad? Canadian friends, please spill it: Do you people part with your dollars less often than we do?)

I’m thinking the freedom to venture away from the cash register and stool to try to drum up sales with nationality insults is one of the advantages of having a kiosk instead of a real store in a mall. There must be a radius limit, though, because the minstrels won’t come running after you, no matter how close they are to making the sale. If you keep walking, they’ll eventually step back inside the invisible line and try someone closer.

At home in our regular mall, when trying to avoid them, I just put my phone up to my ear and carry on an imaginary conversation. It keeps them away like a garlic necklace. I am clever and witty and a sparkling conversationalists in those pretend phone calls. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my call, I have to hover outside Macy’s and finish talking before I go in.

But at Sawgrass, I was with other people, so a phone call to my imaginary friend would have to wait. I had to fend off the kiosk minstrels with my bare hands and an Ann Taylor Factory Store shopping bag weighted down with a chunky necklace.

This mall is so big, it took us 20 minutes to walk from the end of Avenue 1, home of Bare Feet Shoes, to the far end of Avenue 4, where the Lids store was. Before you think that this mall was organized in order of where you would put things onto your body, no; it was organized by making a list of every possible thing you could ever want to buy and then putting the list through a paper shredder and then feeding the scraps into the central air conditioning vent. Where they landed the racks were set up and stuff was sold. There are five sunglasses stores. There are two Elegance Perfume stores, one on each end. There are 15 stores that sell athletic shoes.

For you hardcore shoppers out there, this might be kid’s stuff, but for me, it was all so overwhelming. I just kept thinking back to the days when I would take my kids school clothes shopping and they would whine that they couldn’t find anything. If we had lived near the nation’s sixth largest mall, I would have just parked myself at one of the Cinnabons and sent the kids off to shop with the order: Don’t come back until you’ve got five outfits or a part-time job at a kiosk.