Not An Ordinary Day At the Mall.

True story, as told by a friend:

Sarah was headed for the mall in search of some peace of mind. Things were just getting too much, and she had to get out of the rut she felt she was in, and the loneliness was driving her insane. She grabbed her keys and threw them in her purse. The book she had promised herself that she was going to finish reading was sitting there on her nightstand and she impulsively threw it in her purse along with her keys. Taking a book to a shopping mall sounded a little crazy, but it didn’t matter to her at this point. Sarah had spent most of her week alone at home near the phone, and her apartment just was too empty! Sarah had the need to be around other people. She applied another coat of black cherry lipstick before heading out the door, slamming the door recklessly behind her.

It was a busy day at the mall for a Thursday, but Sarah surprisingly found a great parking spot in front of her favorite store. She exited her car and made a mad dash across the parking lot to the department store door, where a bearded man oddly seemed to be waiting for her, holding the door open. She thanked the kind man and went immediately towards the women’s shoes.

“Hello, Miss, can I help you find that shoe in your size?”

The young woman’s question startled Sarah so much that she almost dropped the beautiful leopard 3-inch pump she was holding. She had been eyeing the pair of open-toe sandals for a while now, but they were still not on sale. She still couldn’t justify paying $150 for a pair. Sarah turned to the salesgirl , and shook her head.

“Not today, but thank you.”

After a stroll through the sale rack of shoes, she didn’t find anything that held her interest, so she ventured off until she found herself in the women’s wear department going through the sale rack of dresses.

“Hello, can I help you anything today?” called out an older sales lady from her register.

“Just looking,” Sarah responded.

Sarah went on looking at each dress hanging there on the rack, searching for something appealing to the eye with little success, thinking to herself how odd it was to have already been asked by two completely different salespeople if she had needed help. Normally she would be in and out of the store, with little notice, almost feeling invisible, but today it seemed that all eyes were on her from the moment the man had stopped to hold the door for her into the store. She questioned herself and wondered what was different. Was it what she was wearing? Certainly, her blue jeans and red sweater didn’t scream out, a lady with incredible amounts of money to spend, but more like, single mom looking for a good sale.

Sarah moved from one rack of clothes to yet to another, leaving her just less impressed. Every piece of clothing seemed to look just as mediocre as the next, and the whole experience was proving to be fruitless. Perhaps going to the mall today wasn’t the best idea, she said to herself. Retail therapy seemed to always help her get out of a rut when she felt blue, but today she just wasn’t feeling it. She just wasn’t finding what she was looking for and doubted if she really knew what she trying to find in the first place. Her eyes soon were diverted to the exit of the store. The large glass windows that spilled into a busy food court seemed welcoming enough and the thought of a pretzel and a diet Coke sounded much more appealing than anything else around her.

Thank God I brought my book, Sarah said to herself as she juggled her pretzel and Coke from the pretzel shop. She spied a nice, empty couch near the center of the mall. At last, she could sit down somewhere, eat her pretzel and finally finish that book!

Despite the noise, she still managed to read a few chapters and finish her pretzel peacefully without interruption. Sarah looked up from her book to take a good look around her. She saw the children shouting from the play area, and the people at the tables in the food court, conversing and laughing amongst themselves. It was then that she noticed three individuals standing there near the burger place. Their backs were turned, and they were talking to each other, but seemed quite out of place. It was an older black gentleman in what looked like a very outdated dark suit, with two middle-aged looking white women standing near the burger place, empty-handed without a shopping bag or purse on their arms, looking seemingly lost or in search of someone.

Sarah then went back to her book, realizing minutes later that she had been reading the same paragraph at least three times. Her concentration was lost, and her eyes were beginning to feel tired. Feeling annoyed, Sarah put down her book to put it away in her purse, when she sensed someone standing near her. Looking up from her purse, she found the very same three odd-looking people she had noticed before standing now directly in front of her.

“Hello, good afternoon ma’m,” the older man said, looking down at Sarah, “Can I have a hug?”

The first thing Sarah noticed was the older man’s very old brown polyester suit, and the man’s toothy smile. The two women standing on either side of him were also smiling, both wearing flowered printed dresses. One woman had reading glasses sitting on the end of her nose, with her hair in a braid, and the other woman had curly hair, and with long bangs that fell white above her eyes.

Normally, Sarah would have felt compelled to immediately say no to man, or even get up and get away from these people altogether, but today Sarah felt strangely different. An unexplainable rush of warmth of compassion from these three people, and this man in particular, as she felt herself get up from the couch to give the stranger in the brown suit a hug.

“May I also have a hug?”

One of the other women, the one with curly hair standing next to the old man, extended her arms to Sarah. Sarah turned to the woman and embraced her as well.

Immediately afterward, the older man spoke to Sarah saying:

“I want you to know that everything is going to be alright.”

Sarah at that moment felt as though she had been in the middle of a dream. Of course, nothing about what had just happened seemed normal. She had never been asked for an embrace from strangers before in such a manner, nor had she ever experienced a feeling quite like this from anyone. Their embraces felt warm, deliberate, and sincere. For a moment this very odd meeting felt as though she had just been reunited with loved ones, rather than strangers.

Feeling somewhat embarrassed and confused, Sarah nodded at the old man, and quietly said thank you. She then quickly turned her back to the three as she nervously gathered her belongings to leave. She really didn’t know what to say more to the three, or what she should do, but remembered to turn back to at least say goodbye, but when she did they were no longer there standing in front of her. She proceeded to look all around to see where they had vanished. Had they sat down at a table at the food court or had they headed to another store? Sarah wondered to herself how they had walked away so quickly. They seemed to have left as quickly as they had appeared to her; almost as if they had disappeared in thin air.

Feeling still stunned from her strange encounter, Sarah quickly got herself away from the food court, making a mad dash to the nearest exit. She made her way through the department store that she had been in earlier, rushing past the racks of clothing, and shoes to the entrance door. There was no one holding the door for her this time, nor did anyone seem to notice Sarah. She was suddenly back being invisible, sprinting through the exit, rushing across the street, and into the parking lot. Sarah pulled out the keys and quickly got inside of her car where she spent the next 10 minutes behind the steering wheel sobbing.

Sarah finally found what she had been shopping for.