There I was this afternoon, typing away on my laptop, when suddenly everything froze. I tried all the usual things — nothing worked. So I drove up to the Apple Store in Cambridge where, to make a long story short, the techs determined that my laptop had to be sent off the be repaired. Fortunately, I have back-ups of my most important data here on my office computer, as well as hidden away on my unlimited stoage space on AOL’s server.

The Apple store is in the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall, not someplace I’d ordinarily go. So as long as I was there, I firgured I’d look around and see what it was like. I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the stores or restaurants, but the people were fascinating: families with children, a few pre-adolescents on their own, teenagers in small groups, young adults, and even a few middle-aged people like me. I seemed to notice that everyone was surprisingly well dressed. Then I figured out that many of the young people were playing the mating game when I heard some young men behind me talking about pretty girls they had an eye on — the crowds were so thick I couldn’t tell which pack of young women they were looking at, but that helped me realize why so many of the young people looked like they took such care in dressing. I did not fit in — not that I was badly dressed, but I was sensibly dressed for the cold weather and slushy sidewalks, as opposed to being fashionably dressed.

After I left the mall, I walked over to the MIT Press Bookstore. I fit in better there. Some geeky-looking young women browsed the cognitive science books; had I been twenty years younger, I would have been fascinated by them (I mean, cognitive science, wow). One man was sitting in the corner with the computer science books and I don’t think he moved the entire half hour I was in the store. I browsed their selection of books on ecology and the environment, but wound up buying a book called On Physics and Philosophy. I’ve lost my interest in malls, but bookstores still do it for me.