Dear Jack—
I couldn’t say how long it’s been since I set foot in a large department store or even a mall, but I had this gift card for Marshall Field’s and I was on my way back from the recycling center in Bloomington, so I figured I’d just stop at Southdale and see if I could use it to buy a Christmas gift for my daughter, K. I had in mind a clock radio. I figured a big department store like that would have a ton of them. I know Dayton’s would have.

So I go in and study the store map for electronics or radios or however they might classify it. Finding nothing of that sort, I figured maybe up there on the third floor where they have the kitchen electronics.

As I make my way through the store looking for the escalators, I notice that there’s women’s clothing everywhere, and at first there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it--there wasn’t a sportswear section and the like. It was all designer names, like Hilfiger and Claiborne and a whole bunch more I didn’t recognize. What would a person do, I wondered, if she were just looking for, say, a nice blue sweater? How would she know which area to look in?

But I wasn’t looking for sweaters. I knew my gift card was worth $25 and this clearly wasn’t Savers! Soon I was half looking for radios and half just looking around. I felt a little like an anthropologist in a strange culture. If I’d had the whole afternoon and a field notebook, I might have just parked myself in a corner and studied the passing scene. But then who knows how long this letter would be!

I paused to admire some very soft knit gloves; maybe I should get K a pair of these, I thought. So I looked at the price tag--$52! They were cashmere, but still!

Then two older women came into the department. One was saying, “I’d like a scarf like that one you’re wearing,” with a kind of hinting edge to her voice. The woman with the coveted scarf stopped to admire the cashmere gloves. I watched her face as she fumbled for the price tag, and I sure knew when she found it! She walked away muttering, oblivious to her friend’s hints.

Finally, I asked a tall dark-eyed beauty at one of the many cosmetic counters if she could tell me where to find clock radios. “R-r-rahdio?” she echoed, in such an exquisite accent. “I theenk you might find r-r-rahdio this way,” she pointed. So I headed in the direction of the point and soon discovered that she wasn’t missing the “s”--there was one clock radio, and it cost way more than my gift card.

I was in an area labeled “Guy Gadgets.” There was an “Auto-Drive Tie Rack” that holds 72 ties; you press a control bar and it rotates around, like a drycleaner’s rack! It cost $35.95. Not that K would want one of those.

Nor was she likely to need “The World’s First Truly Silent and Efficient Watch Winder.” I kid you not, Jack; it claimed to “keep your self-winding watch on time and on date,” and it was only $99.95!

So I ended up buying chocolates, and not as many as you might suppose for $25! Oh, and they all contain milk, to which K’s allergic. You and the Mrs. should come over and have some with us sometime. I’ll put the coffee on.
—M