Confessions of a mall walker
(Amended version of essay published 3/17/11, Manila Standard Today)

The Tacoma Mall in the state of Washington, USA, is my favorite place this time of the year. The holiday rush is long over. The mall is quiet and the throngs of shoppers are gone; so are the huge sales and discounted items. But that’s all good because I don’t come to the mall to shop. I come here to walk. In the winter when it’s freezing cold out, I become part of a growing constituency in America, the “mall walkers.”

You can tell us apart from other mall habitués by our tennis shoes and our brisk and purposeful walk. Judging by the silver streaks in our hair and the lines on our faces, majority of us are closing in on 60 or beyond.

One does get to be a bit more cautious as the years add up. I walk the mall because it is safer and far less strenuous than braving the elements outdoors. Plus, there are no bicyclists and skateboarders to dodge from and no power walkers with their quick dismissive side glances leaving me in their wake. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I would mumble under my breath, envying their youth and their lithe, supple bodies.

The mall walkers do not belong to a formal association with bylaws and monthly dues. We do not keep a list of members with contact information and other affiliations. We are not on Facebook as a group; we don’t tweet, we don’t blog, we don’t meet. We are simply a loose group of individuals who acknowledge one another with a short, friendly nod or a soft “Hi,” as we cross paths.

From my office in Olympia -- provided the usual traffic by the military Joint Base Lewis-McChord is flowing smoothly -- I can get to Tacoma Mall within a half-hour drive. I contort my body in the driver’s seat of my SUV to trade my winter boots for tennis shoes; then off to the warmth of the mall I go.

Tacoma Mall is fairly small, about one third of a mile in length. I normally do two laps around, which is about a half-hour’s worth of cardio workout. I walk briskly, though I don’t swing my arms like I would normally do when I walk outside. Health experts say that to maximize the exercise, walkers need to swing their arms in an exaggerated manner as they briskly move their legs.

Now I don’t know about you, but the first time I saw a jogger swinging her arms out in an exaggerated manner, I almost fell to my knees laughing. She looked ridiculous, like a chicken flapping her wings chest high while she trotted her stuff along the water front. So I’m sure others got a good laugh, too, when I started doing it myself, having found out that sticking my elbows out and pumping my arms as I walked, propelled me forward faster. This is not to say I am willing to make a spectacle of myself at the mall, however.

So I walk briskly, trying not to get into eye contact with young people skilled in trapping the often gullible older generation into listening to their impassioned sales spiel. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not easy to disengage politely once contact has been made. (Persistence is a virtue but not when you’re on the other end of an aggressive sales pitch.) Thankfully, this is not normally a problem as most mall workers can tell the serious shoppers from the “look-sees,” the idlers, the high school kids playing hooky, and regular mall walkers like me.

Having walked the mall for a couple of years now, I’m wise to the traps and pitfalls lurking there. I learned early on not to look too closely at window displays or be tempted by the wonderful scents wafting out of Victoria’s Secret or Bath and Body Works. I made the mistake of going in one time -- just to look, mind you -- and came out an hour later with three bags of deliciously-hued under things, various creams and lotions and body butter, and cinnamon/vanilla-scented candles that I am apparently unable to resist, even in my 60s. I am happy to report that my friends and family are still enjoying the largesse of that unplanned shopping spree.

When I visited Manila last month, I was amazed at the number and size of the shopping malls there; easily three to four times what we have here in Washington State. Most are clean, well lit, and artfully stocked with merchandise. (I’m going to digress here to advise fellow balikbayans not to bother lugging those heavy suitcases when you come to visit the Philippines. You don’t need to pack your bags with US canned goods and chocolates, Taster’s Choice and coffee creamer, blackberry jam and orange marmalade, Pepperidge Farm cookies and apples and oranges and grapes, because those are all available in Manila now. I kid you not. Remember when you could get US goods only if you had access to JUSMAG (Joint United States Military Advisory Group) or Subic Base? Ancient history.)

I cannot, however, imagine walking any of the malls I visited in Manila as I do here in Tacoma. Manila malls are generally packed with people and some have overly loud sound systems that practically blow your head off. (Aging ears are particularly sensitive to the loud, screechy, discordant sounds that pass for music nowadays.)

You don’t want to walk the malls in Manila anyway. If you can tolerate the loud sound and the press of people, you can get yourself some of the yummiest food available on the planet. You can sit at one of the tables and eavesdrop on OFW conversations that include such foreign places as Dahar and Doha, Hongkong, Sydney, Vancouver, Rome, and Bahrain. You’ll leave for home feeling like you’ve traveled all over the world, and you didn’t even have to walk the mall to do it.