Love me some SuperMall

Every year, my wife and I vow to avoid it at all costs. Let's patronize local business. Let's make purchases online. Let's get gift cards. Let's stay away from the malls.

So, naturally, on Saturday, we found ourselves marching like penguins into the SuperMall of the Great Northwest, perched atop an expansive swath of formally fertile farmland in south King County, Washington. We had some loose ends to tie up for Christmas, so we broke down. How hard could it be on the Saturday before the Big Day to buy a few small gifts?

My daughters, like most kids, love shopping malls—so many bright, shiny widgets and woozles to compete for their adolescent greenback. I once asked my older daughter why she loved the mall so much.
"Because there's cool stuff."
"Like what?"
"You, know. Stuff that's cool. Oh, never mind."
I guess my frontal lobe isn't quite evolved enough to comprehend shiny things.

Actually, our purchasing went just fine until we decided to stop at a pretzel stand for a couple of plain, unsalted pretzels. It's a fairly healthy mall snack, I thought, as I scanned the massive menu.
"Could I get two plain, unsalted pretzels, please?"
The girl looked at me like I'd asked for a slice of her spleen.
"Did you mean two Plain Pizza pretzels? They're really good. It's just a Cheez-Whiz-filled pretzel, inside a pizza, inside a pretzel, all topped with pure creamery Butterish. Or there's our Meat Lover's pretzel, which is mostly pork products, all twisted up with bits of Bacos, which are cemented on with pure, creamery Butterish."
"Umm, actually I wanted just two, regular, unsalted, unButterished pretzels. Do you have those?"
"Let me check. No, I'm sorry. But you can get a Fudgy Wudgy pretzel, and whittle off the fudge."

By that time we were off to Orange Julius.