Rainy days and Sundays always bring them out

I would have bought whatever they were selling … except I didn’t know what they were selling … and I’m not sure they’re selling anything, anyway.

If it was supposed to open in February, being able to see myself in the window means the inventory is only visible from the other side, you’re supposed to just walk in without knowing what’s inside, the store never opened or it opened and closed in five months.

But even though I find products named after parts of speech odd — Suzi gets hair products from a company called Verb — a company called Whom speaks to the grammar pedant in me.

By the way, it’s a furniture company.

This may be the greatest mall-related collaboration since Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” video.

We probably don’t go to the mall more than a couple times a year, and although I went a few weeks ago, I was so focused on finding a raincoat that I didn’t really pay attention to my surroundings.

But with nothing on our agenda after lunch other than Suzi stopping at Sephora, I noticed the store sign advertising “Forever basics,” which I’m assuming is completely different than “forever basic.”

Or has “basic” been replaced by “cheugy”? Even though me using either one would immediately set off “Old dude!” “Old dude!” alarm bells — perhaps because I’m basic and/or cheugy — I like to have at least some idea of what words the younger set is using.

Also a thing I did not know … Forever 21 now appears to be XXI Forever. It also looks like the decor has been spruced up, perhaps to appeal to shoppers who have realized that one does not stay 21 eternally?

After some more walking around — the mall was a lot bigger than we thought — we saw it.

Years ago, when Suzi said she smelled a mall, I asked her what the scent was, and she replied “rampant consumerism and Auntie Anne’s pretzels.”

I’m going to say the Amazon 4-star store on the lower level symbolized the rampant consumerism, and the two Auntie Anne’s we saw were combined with … Carvel ice cream!

This may be the greatest mall-related collaboration since Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” video.

By the way, I managed to walk by both Carvels, the milkshake shop and the store selling a replica Nolan Ryan test-pattern Astros jersey, and I’m quite proud of my self-restraint.

Suzi and I are the prime age — and so is Tiffany, which I’d rather not talk about — where walking around the mall used to be one of the main ways to entertain yourself and a desire for Sbarro pizza was all the motivation you needed, and you didn’t even need that most of the time.

In those days, or in my early 20s when I worked at McDonald’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods, the busiest days at the mall were during the Christmas season, the days around big movie premieres and rainy weekend days.

After all, if you couldn’t do anything outside, what else were you going to do?

But those days are supposedly no more, that the financial crisis, department stores going out of business, online shopping and the pandemic are bringing about the death of malls.

Overall, it’s probably true, but when we were there — strolling around after lunch because we just wanted to be out of the house, although P.F. Chang’s is not exactly the food court — it didn’t seem that way. There were crowds everywhere, young and old, carrying bags or just walking around.

Maybe it was the gloomy weather. Maybe it was school shopping, or maybe it was more of the (hopefully) post-vaccine mass release into the world, but it felt like old times.

However, I must say that playing Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” as we were leaving was a little too on the nose.

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