06.10.03
Once upon a time, when I was still working at Younkers, many moons ago, I was walking through the main-level mall entrance to the store on a trip back from somewhere in the mall had food or drink that I desired and with which I was returning to my place of work.
Setting foot in the store, I heard a curious "creak" from somewhere to my left, and looked over to see what had made the noise... just in time to hurl my body out of the path of one of those gigantic floor-to-ceiling wall mirrors that had spontaneously decided to detach itself from the wall and fall menacingly in my general direction.
The very large mirror struck the exact spot upon which I had been standing, and I threw up my arm and turned my body to the side in time to avoid a faceful of glass, but not in enough time to avoid being showered by the spray of glass that erupted up from the ground with the force of the impact.
As I felt the small bits of glass pelt me, and the racks of coats among which I was standing, I had images running through my head of the mirror actually having hit me -- being run through with a large piece of falling glass, like Tony Goldwyn in Ghost, or having my throat slashed open by and errant shard of flying glass, like Famke Janssen in Final Destination.
I shook my body like a dog after a bath, the little bits of glass flying out of my hair and off of my clothing, landing among the rest of the shrapnel littering the outerwear department, and assessing myself for cuts or scratches. Thankfully, I was unharmed.
People that had heard the crash came running over to the area to see what had happened, and to see if I was okay, of which I had to repeatedly assure them that I was.
Later, after I went upstairs, related my story to the people in the salon, and consumed whatever it was that I had brought into the store with me to consume, I noticed a pebble in my shoe, making standing and walking uncomfortable. Of course, upon removal of my shoe, I discovered a little piece of glass had come upstairs with me, not harming me beyond a teensy bit of discomfort that was easily remedied.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn't until one of the mirrors at the Younkers fell off the wall and almost pasted one of the members of management that they actually did something about their deadly predilection for feeling gravity's pull. I believe that at least two more mirrors crashed to the earth between the time of my near death and Audra's almost perishment.
The reason I share this story is because on May 31, while consumers were consuming consumables at the Express store in the mall at which I work, one of their gigantic 5' x 10' floor-to-ceiling mirrors, weighing 500 or so pounds, decided to detach itself from the wall and fall menacingly in the direction of a 6 year-old child. Lacking adult reasoning skills and reflexes, the child was crushed* beneath the mirror.
Honestly, I thought the worst thing that could ever happen at that store would be the visual assault of the women working there actually wearing the clothing from the store. If there was ever a bunch of women that should be punished for trying to squeeze their Michelin Man-shaped racks into clothing meant for leggy sorority girls with eating disorders that look like hoochies and the gawky preteen girls that they want to look like, it would be the staff of the Lincolnwood Town Center Mall Express store.
*Morbidly, if you follow that link, and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you see a table of sponsored links, featuring:
What's in your head?