My Mall of America Experience

OK, all this talk of the people who went to Mall of America last weekend is starting to make me jealous and, as a retrospective, I have decided to tell my Mall of America story. I have watched our trip's DVD because I miss this place a lot.

I came from a graduating class of 20 from a small school called Mead High School. Every year, the senior class gets to use its profits for a trip somewhere. We decided to go to the Mall of America. Before we even left the school, two girls, Megan and Angela were fighting about the fate of a mutual friend, Ashley. I ended up sitting next to Angela and Ashley on the ride up. I was not on good terms with Ashley at the time, but I decided early on that to make this trip as fun as possible, I would bury the hatchet and we never quarreled and really enjoyed each other's company. We stopped at Adair, IA for gas and Megan and Angela were at it again, except this time it was on video. After a 9 hour van ride up to Bloomington we got to our hotel, the Country Inns and Suites directly across from the mall.

Of course, we hit it right away. I love that place. They have a store for everything and they have everything. The first thing we saw was the LEGO store! I went over to Old Navy and picked up some clothes and then we wandered around for a while. The next day we hit the mall hard. We went to Camp Snoopy for a while and then the stores. Everyone wanted to make their own cereal at the Cereal Adventure place, but never got around to it. On the ferris wheel Megan would spit on people below her and later, another classmate, Eric would win one of those mallet strength tester games. He got an inflatable mallet which he would use to pound on people throughout the trip.

The most popular stores our class hit, because Omaha didn't have any of these at the time, were Hollister, Zumiez, and Forever 21. Everyone had a shopping bag from at least one of these stores. We had walkie talkies and I was usually called upon if someone was lost because I have an amazing sense of direction. I bought a Simpsons stein for one of my friends who couldn't come and a 3D puzzle of the Tower of Orthanc from the Lord of the Rings. I also bought a LEGO Imperial Shuttle. I probably bought more and forgot about it. I spent most of the day with Megan and Angela (who reconciled fast) and Ashley and Claire, but we ran into others. Our class would find several opportunities to take group pictures along the way like on the giant LEGOs and on the hotel steps. I found most of the Star Wars characters, such as the LEGO Jango Fett, the Darth Vader near Spencer's, the Stormtrooper at Wizards of the Coast, and the Yoda at the Sharper Image.

We then went over to T.G.I.Friday's as a class for dinner and the waiters tied balloons onto Megan for her birthday last week. We went back to the mall for Camp Snoopy as a class with the exception of future WSC student Nikki Simon and her at-the-time boyfriend Shawn who just simply wandered off. The log ride was awesome and I ended up holding eveyone's stuff, which I didn't mind. When we got back to the hotel, we all attempted to watch Red Dragon on a 13" laptop computer screen (This was before A/V cables and RF Modulators would be understood) while crammed in a hotel room. Our cameraman, Chris, found out his camera had night vision and he started filming more crap. We left the next day and our class was never more united. To this day I still revere the Mall of America for being one of the best social experiences with my graduating class ever.