Nostalgia

Today is Friday.  Outside, the sky is somewhat somber, similar to my mood, blue.  The sky is full of billowing yet sad purplish-blue and yet not quite indigo clouds.  Fall is in the air. 

I spent the morning trying to occupy my day, not an easy feat when I have little to nothing to do.  I stumbled across a blog and found myself going back to the very first post and reading forward.  I finally stopped when I read a years worth (fortunately not daily posts!) at December 2009.  I'm sure I will meander back to get current on the blog and continue to follow it for a while.

I've been spending time with someone that I once knew of, back during some former life.  A life of naivete and inexperience.  A life of youthfulness and innocence.  I didn't really know him.  I'm still not sure how much I really know him.  Anyway, we decided to meet during my lunch break at a nearby mall.

Nostalgia. 

I arrived at the mall, once a happening and crowded place.  A place full of bustling people, loud sounds, sweet smells of cinnamon rolls and music.  A place of fast paced shoppers on lunch hours and mother's and children screaming and laughing.  Now a place of almost desertion, desolation and despair.  A place affected by a difficult economy.

I walked around briefly as I waited for my company to arrive.  I shuffled my feet and looked from side to side.  At the stores that once were.  Long forgotten.  Long abandoned. 

One store.  One store on an entire wing of the mall existed.  There was no posting on the outside to indicate the store.  I couldn't tell from a far even what type of store it was.  As I approached, I recognized that it was a Halloween store.  A very large store that once occupied a pillar of the mall, again replaced by another store soon to be out of business.  Halloween, almost two months away and already a store for the purchasing of costumes.

I walked back to the meeting spot and met my friend (while realizing his initials are the same as the EX-Bf) and his son.  We went back to the store and spent time walking the aisles.  I reminisced in my mind about costumes from my childhood.  The costumes that my mom labored over to have my 3.5 year old brother and I be, together.  Costumes of Pinocchio & Geppetto, Tin Man & Scarecrow and many long since forgotten.  I remembered the costumes that were just mine alone - The breakfast (seriously egg, bacon, toast), football player, joker, etc.  I marveled at the absurdity of some of the costumes - seriously who would buy that unless it was the last costume left an hour before party time?  I did like the couples costume of the cord & plug, but ketchup and mustard, telletubbies for couples?  Really?

We continued down the other stretch of the mall, where more of the stores were occupied, but not many.  There was a toy store, but not the typical, familiar toy store that I recall from my childhood mall adventures.  There wasn't a KB Toy Store where the aisles were jam packed with noise toys and toys you had to walk around and aisles of board games and Lego's and video games.  No this was a toy store of few aisles with stuffed animals on displays on the wall.  It looked like a hands-off toy store.  Not very friendly and not very inviting.  Almost a collector's toy store of sorts.  What I did find in the toy store, Smurfs.  Ah, I remember the smurfs.  I had smurf collectibles and strawberry shortcake collectibles.  All long gone, but the ability to remember.  To reminisce.

Nostalgia...la lah la lah lah lah, laah laah la la la (I hope with my attempt you are singing the la la song of the Smurfs too!)  To remember and to think, now Smurfs, they were blue.