So I'm a slacker. I admit it. I'm a lackie with a chill/lax/lay low/ whatever you want to call it attitude. It probably comes from being jaded by the ways of this world. But, however it happened, that is who I am.

And I've got this brother named Mikel. He changes all the time. He's only thirteen, he dosen't know who he is just yet. But, for the moment, Mike and I are just a pair of lay lows.

The point of this little "welcome to me" monologue is..shopping. Yes. Shopping.

Without fail, every weekend, some assortment of my family trecks on over to the mall. Funny thing is, we live equidistant from about...now I'm not good with guessing these things, but I'd say about..yeah, twenty thousand and a half different malls. My family zips all around the mall, dragging their bags behind them, buying everything you could ever think you want until you get home and realize it's completely pointless.

This brings us back to sweet little Kyle and her bigger but not older brother, Mikel. Mikel's a guy and he's thirteen, that means he either never wants to shop or never has the money. And I'm not into posessions. When I get money, I either put it into one of my bank accounts or buy cd's. So, him and I roam the mall, slow paced and without giving a damn, and do what comes naturally. We people watch. Ta-da! Yeah, right now you're going, "Is this stupid little snit going somewhere or not, come on already!"

Well, my friend, that was it. The people watching. This is a log of all the interesting people we've observed while hanging out at one or another of the seventy kabillion malls we go to. Now, enjoy. And the names have not been changed, on account of we never found out any of these people's names to begin with.

One afternoon, Mikel and I were sitting in the area of the food court where Westwaters big and small meet up at the end of each shopping trip. We were enjoying the lunch that, making us overwhelmingly proud, had only cost us two dollars, by way of the Wendy's dollar menu. All of a sudden, Mikel points to something behind me, laughs, and says, "Ky, check out skirt guy." I turned to look at this guy and this is what I saw: the man had shoulder legnth brown hair, was wearing a leather jacket, leather boots, and a pretty little plaid skirt. It wasen't a kilt, kilts are pleated, trust me-I know more than you could ever want to know about kilts-this was a skirt. We watched over the banister from an upper level as guy in skirt went into Hot Topic and came out a few minutes later with a little Hot Topic bag. We laughed over him for a while, deciding he thought he was "kilt guy" and was probably handing out business cards that said "kilt guy", leaving everyone to wonder, "Why is guy in skirt handing out business cards that say kilt guy, he's not kilt guy, he's guy in skirt." We saw him again a few minutes later. He walked passed us, smiled at me as if he knew what I was thinking, and disappeared out the doors to the rest of the world. We look for guy in skirt everytime we return to that mall, we've even informed the rest of the family so they could keep an eye out for him, but we haven't seen him again. Mikel thinks maybe we were hallucinating. I think maybe we wouldn't recognize him dressed in different clothing. I'll leave it to your imagination.

Mikel and I were walking down the hallway mallway aislie thingie and this old ragga muffin of a man stops us and asks, "Do you have any idea where the GNC is?" I hate when people ask me for directions and I don't know where they're going any better than they do. I said something like, "Um, I think it's that way." The guy nods. "Yeah, down there, right?" I'm wondering what to say when he looks at Mikel. Mike. He was in an odd mood I guess. He had wrapped a great big chain around his neck a few times and was wearing it as a necklace all through the friggin place, people were staring at us. Ragga muffin GNC guy asks him, "Isn't that heavy?" Mike says no. "Lemme feel it." and he's all feeling my brother's chain. It freaked me out. If some old guy with a dew rag and cut off sleeves came up to me and touched something on my person, I wouldn't be surprised if all the Tae Bo I've obsorbed suddenly started taking over my body and kicking ragga muffin ass. Mike just stood there, giving him weird looks. Meanwhile, I'm looking around to see if I can figure out where the GNC is. The location of the place had never been a concern of mine before, I don't care about the GNC. "So, yeah, I think it's over there." I said and we walked away. I later discovered that GNC was in the other direction and on a different floor. But my directions never mattered to ragga muffin GNC guy anyway. We saw him walk away from us and ask someone else. Later that day, we observed him asking yet another group of people. Mikel has decided that ragga muffin GNC guy actually works for GNC and it's his job to ask people if they know where it is to make them think about it. Mike also swears he's seen the man doing the same thing during other trips to the mall. Everytime I see the GNC, I think about that guy and wonder what in there he might have wanted and if it's worth exploring someday. So, if ragga muffin GNC guy really does get paid to ask people for directions, I guess he's doing a pretty good job.

A few years ago, it was Christmas eve. That's not the point though. For five pm on Christmas eve, the mall was oddly empty. Mikel and I were not alone, we were with Matti, Jordie, and Charli, and we were tailing my father. We were probably looking for a gift for him to give my mother. Anyway, we were in Yankee Candle or some equally annoying store when, all of a sudden, we heard a great big grunting tuba start to play jingle bells. I went out into the hallway mallway aislie thingie and saw a great big guy with his sousaphone wrapped around him, standing in the middle of the floor, playing Christmas carols. It seemed extremely odd to me. I figure, if anyone's gonna be playing carols in a mall, it's not gonna be on a tuba. Maybe this isn't funny, but my family really thought it was. We're easily amused.

Toys Up the Yin Yang

While in a Target store, Mike and I were walking around, looking for a big green ball, and we passed a women with two children. One of the kids was begging for a toy and the woman told him no, that he didn't need any more toys. "You've got toys up the yin yang!" she said. I thought it was pretty funny. Imagine it said in a slight Southern accent with a I-think-I'm-pretty-hip edge. I giggled as we walked by, but it became a hilarious situation once we had turned down a different aisle and we heard her say it again. "You've got toys up the yin yang!" She obviously thought this was a really cool thing to say considering how loud she screamed it and the fact that she did it twice. There you go. The yin yang woman. Maybe this isn't funny, but I was amused.

Mikel and I were still in the store we had run into yin yang woman in when we got stuck in a flood of people and wound up walking behind two kids. They were probably about fifteen, two boys, and they were obviously a very cool pair. We were listening in on their conversation, unabashedly, and they began to add "batman" onto the end of every sentence.

"What should we do now, Batman?"

"I don't know, Batman."

"I'm hungry, Batman."

"Lets go to the food court, Batman."

We followed them into the Target foodcourt, and they ordered, not abandoning Batman.

"Two sodas, and personal pizzas, Batman."

The foodcourt woman just rolled her eyes and looked over at us, rolling with laughter.

Elevator woman

This is one of the few stories that we didn't have to search for homur in. See, we were in the mall (shocker, I know) and it was the day before my thirteenth birthday, so that's over four years ago. I had just got my nails done for the first and last time, so I was in extravagent pain. Not just the pain they intend to put you in by using an electric drill thing that's bigger than you to devour your cuticles, but I tensed up and it caused my arm muscles to get really sore, cause I was sitting there for three hours while they did horrible things to my pretty little fingers. (I love my hands, they're the only pretty thing about me) So, yeah, the point: I was in pain. We got into the elevator to go back downstairs cause I didn't feel like climbing the stairs. Seriously, I was about to pass out, those people tried to kill me. We got in the elevator and enough people got in with us so that we were all standing squished against the sides, unable to move. We were on the ground for longer than we should have been, I was starting to wonder if maybe we were too heavy for the thing. It was one of those elevators with the glass walls, and these two mall security guys in their stupid hats were standing not far from us. So, this obnoxious woman started banging on the glass and calling them. Imagine Janis, Chandler's old girlfriend from Friends, yelling "Security! Security!" in her horrible Janis voice. That's what this sounded like. The security guys had to have heard her, but they were totally ignoring her. We were sitting there for about five minutes, her tapping and screaming, before Mikel leans over and whispers, "Did anyone push the button?" I burst into laughter and everyone turned to look at us so I repeated Mike's question and they went silent. Then an old man up in front by the button panel hits the button and we took off. When the elevator opened on the next floor, everyone waiting for it was extremely confused, because everyone on it was roaring with laughter. Except for Janis. For some reason, she didn't find it all that funny.

The Stoner

The other day I dragged Mikel to the mall to do some cd shopping. We were in Best Buy and I went up to the counter to pay. The cashier sees me coming and slips her sun glasses on then goes through our twelve cd order in such a daze. She couldn't find any of the barcodes and when I handed her the money, she just stared at me for the longest time. I'm a cashier myself and I know, after six hours of standing there scanning things, you lose your kick--but this was ridiculous. The woman was stoned out of her mind and she tried to tell me that they would check my reciept at the door but it came out, "..the door....at the door they...look. check your..uh...bag..at the door....that..uh...guy..."

"You guys wanna get drunk tonight"

Mikel and I were at the mall, sitting on the bench, waiting for someone to finish..something..somewhere. I don't know. These four or five guys just came out of nowhere and one sat really close to us. We were ignoring it when another one came and sat on top of him. Then they slid over so they were both sitting and proceeded to do this until all of them were sitting there with us. Mikel moved down a little to get away from them and one of them basically sat on him. We conversed in hushed tones and decided to pretend we were going to buy sodas to get away from them. I pulled out my money and said something like, "Yeah, we've got enough for soda." We got up and as we were walking past them one of them said,

"Hey, can I have some money?"

I laughed him off and continued on with my task to escape them. Then they got up and started following us.

"So what's up, guys?"

"You wanna get drunk with us tonight?"

"Are you two going out?"

"No, stupid, they're brother and sister."

"Oh, you are? Cool."

And they walked off. So, what the hell?