Sleepless Gen Xers: Meet Me at the Mall
Forget other insomnia cures. Remember the mall.
I have found a cure for insomnia. It will likely only work for people born in the late 1960s through the mid 1970s, because it requires having spent hours of your life in a slowly-disappearing locale: the one-story indoor mall. When I can’t fall asleep at night, I close my eyes, and I visualize the magnificence of my favorite long-demolished mall. I envision opening the door and walking in. I begin to mentally pass the stores. If all goes well, I fall asleep well before I have to figure out exactly what is in that meat log and dairy triangle gift pack that appeared every holiday at Hickory Farms.
My preferred entry is the one I was usually dropped off at throughout my pre-license, mall-visiting years. It is the door next to a restaurant, and I can immediately summon the smell of pizza just by thinking of it. Across from that is a hair salon with a bold black and white swirly exterior composed of mod-style faces, each crowned with flowing hair. If I take a left and approach Lerner, I know Ormand’s, then Cherry and Webb will be next. After that, there will be a Gap full of colored corduroys, next to a store that sells Capezio shoes. I see the rows of pay phones in the center of the mall and if I cross, on the other side of those phones, there is a Weathervane store, where they sold Jessica McClintock dresses for prom.
If I struggle from this entrance to find sleep, I can come in through the mall anchors of Jordan Marsh or Howland’s, or maybe the bank entrance. I never came in through Sears. I may even choose to peruse the original 1970’s-era version, which weirdly contained a mini-mall within the mall. This is trickier because I try to recall all the stores that never made it into the ‘80s. I can still easily summon the pungency of the chlorinated water in a fountain, though. This feature was removed and replaced by rubbery plantings early in the mall’s existence. I used to toss in pennies and watch them flit to the bottom, joining multitudes of other shiny coins. My memory of it magnifies its size and sound, I’m sure.
Or, I can go with the prime-of-my-youth version of the mid ‘80s, with its food court, busy arcade and crowded Tello’s store. I can think back to Friday nights at the mall, which were the highlight of the teenage week. Everyone went, and everyone dressed up. All peered into the darkness of Spencer’s, ogling its risque inventory, but most of us dared not enter. If parents came, you absolutely had to ditch them. There were kids from other high schools and other towns. It was like a teen networking event, in a world before social media had rendered such efforts unnecessary. Unlike today, when kids can see who is where with an app, no one ever knew who they would see. Drama brewed and cliques mingled. Ears were pierced without parental consent, and tiny amounts of booze stolen from home liquor cabinets were poured into far too many sodas to yield intoxicating effects. So little time at the mall was actually spent in stores, as we roved miles up and down its ramps and sat for hours on its benches.
In my quest for sleep, I never choose the last, emptying version of the mall to revisit. Before it was destroyed and replaced by an outdoor shopping center, my mall had lost so many of its stores that it felt eerie and abandoned. Jordan Marsh and its muffins were gone, replaced by a sparsely stocked Macy’s. Filene’s Basement had opened and closed. A flashy, hyper-80’s style store, Scribbles, was abandoned, leaving a darkened space from which neon and pulsating music had once enticed shoppers. No book or record sellers remained. Stores that once held innumerable rolls of bright Lisa Frank adhesives, destined for sticker book collections, disappeared. Benetton and Esprit, who both sold over-sized, bright sweaters I desperately wanted to wear over matching leggings, had departed. This almost closed mall simply does not work. It brings no comfort, no nostalgia.
I avoid that version. Anyone attempting this sleep remedy should too. Join me at the mall in its prime, my fellow past-mid-lifers, when your current days keep you up at night. Rely on your faded memories of the hallowed hair-spray filled space of your youth to summon sleep. Close your eyes, choose a mall and take a stroll. Smell the Mrs. Field’s cookies. Imagine the garbled marl of sweaters, tucked into pleated jeans in the windows of Chess King. Visualize an off the shoulder sweatshirt you must have at Deb’s. But no leg warmers allowed. I knew better than to wear them then, and I don’t let them in my imaginary mall now. You can, however, bring a Rubik’s cube. I can only solve that twisty block correctly in my dreams.
