the random oracle

Last night I went to the Natick Mall, the scene of many prior jaunts back when I lived in Wayland.  I hadn’t been back in several years and the whole place has been completely transformed in the meantime.  The size of the mall itself has nearly doubled, but in addition the new sections are populated with high-end retailers like Ferragamo, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and the like, as well as being anchored by Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.  The whole place is flanked by a ring of condos that link to the mall internally so that the moneyed residents don’t need to ever step foot outdoors to get any of their luxury shopping done.  The complex itself is actually quite impressive, the expansion was done quite tastefully with lots of natural sunlight coming through the glass sunroof and large open spaces inside.

My main impression however was how many teenagers were putzing around the mall.  Somehow living in Manhattan I’d forgotten that there was this awful stage of human development called adolescence… you don’t really see many teenagers hanging out in New York.  Either they don’t exist, or they’re much better at pretending to be grown-up than the suburban variety.  But here they were, in the Natick Mall, in all their hormonally confused, sexually frustrated, acne-ridden, and socially awkward glory.  There were the skanky hos, wearing neon tube-tops and short shorts as if they were going out in Ibiza (in 1985), the slackers in their hoodies, the wannabe thugs in their gold chains and baggy pants, the goths, the jocks, the lipsticks, and so on and so forth.  I’d forgotten about all these little tribes and how much they meant back in high school… not that we don’t have our own tribes now, but somehow we seem to be able to get along better ever so slightly.  Maybe we do grow up at some point… or at least we get better at pretending to get along.