Fraters Libertas

There’s A Whole Lotta Consumin’ Goin’ On Out There

People are spending money. I’m not going to bore you with a long list of statistics to back this up, mainly because I don’t have those statistics and I’m too lazy to look them up. All I have is my personal observations on the matter and what I saw tonight puts paid to the myth that we’re living in an economic wasteland.

The lovely Atomizerette and I, along with her parents, took her son out to the behemoth called Mall of America (definite article optional) tonight for his second 14th birthday dinner this week. In my day, we only got one celebratory birthday meal and we ate sand. That’s right...sand. But I digress.

Our arrival at Mall was greeted with the usual parking nightmare. Too many cars driven by too many ignorant people all trying to find a spot three feet from the entrance make the simple exercise of parking one’s car a Dante-like carnival ride through hell. It was a painful experience, but nothing out of the ordinary at Mall.

The original plan for the evening was to strap on the feedbags at the Rainforest Café, a rainforest themed restaurant that features a 5,500 gallon fish tank, waterfalls, a simulated thunderstorm as well as some miscellaneous overpriced food items. We took one look at the immense horde of humans congregated around the front desk (actually, a large purple elephant) and began to have second thoughts. The man atop the elephant told us that our wait would be over 90 minutes. We all said nertz to that and settled on an alternative with only a 30 minute wait.

During this little respite, I had the opportunity to do a little people watching. I saw some little people, yes, but I also saw a lot of big people too. People with bags. Lots and lots of people with lots and lots of bags full of lots and lots of merchandise. The scene in this place was incredible. Here we are not even two months after Christmas on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and Mall was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it. I’m talking elbow to elbow here folks.

Some would have you believe that we’re not in the middle of an economic recovery. They tell us that even if there is, possibly, just a slight bit of, maybe, a little inkling of, perhaps, a small iota of the tiniest beginning of a minor recovery occurring, that it’s a “jobless” one. They also tell us that the middle class has been left out in the cold.

I don’t know what you people are seeing but today, I saw a lot of those middle class folks out there with their families eating at restaurants and buying merchandise at stores and riding indoor roller coasters and driving their cars and, generally, getting in my way. The bottom line is that they were spending their money; money that they presumably earned at…yeah, you got it, jobs.

There’s a whole lotta consumin’ goin’ on out there, but let that be our little secret. Who knows what would happen if word got out.