"I'll go do a victory lap and come back."
Tri-County Mall. A place named due to its general location -- an intersection of Hamilton, Butler and Warren Counties in the deep southwestern part of Ohio. Just like any mall, Tri-County Mall was thee place when I was a kid and now, like many other malls, is struggling to survive. It's not a 'zombie mall' This area has plenty of those, but with a vast majority of the stores at Tri-County Mall closed, the anchor department stores there are keeping the place afloat. Barely afloat
I was there for 1.1 reasons. Reason number one: The Time/Warner Cable (TWC) DVR box we had went out. I suppose recording new episodes of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia, American Horror Story Freekshow and... Well, I can't remember the third show that the DVR was recording but regardless, it wasn't simple enough to just delete the shows. The system did what the system knows best, it crashed. Without a call to TWC-HQ I took the initiative, and exchanged the DVR and thus sacrificing the few shows that were waiting to be viewed. The exchange went surprisingly well.
Reason .1 was I needed a hat but not just any hat. I needed one with a good brim on it to help keep the Migraine Machine or The Sun (for you newer fans) from shing into mein eyes. I discovered that a store called Lids was one of the few stores still in operation. I asked to be fitted with a baseball cap. A fitted cap at 7 3/4 sized. I never had a fitted cap. baseball or otherwise, and even though they were out of the solid-black caps I decided to get a lil' bit of color in my life: I chose a RED cap... And yes, I asked for him to embroider the cap with the Thwart symbol using the badge on the sleeve of my jacket as example.
"A ellipses [...] with an exclamation point [ ! ]" I asked.
"Oh, that dot-dot-dot-Question mark?" the attendant asked.
So I realized, as I was told, it would take five minutes to complete, I took a brief walk and browsed the CDs at a FYE and was absolutely taken back seeing a double LP by Patti Smith that had the price tag of $44.95 on it, but settled for Thin Lizzys Jailbreak for Julie.
Much to my surprise, the hat turned out great. Realizing I didn't specify a thread color or font style and size, coupled with the workers un-ability to recognize the difference between a question-mark and exclamation point, there was a slight-- well, MORE than just slight chance -- that it would be wrong, but... Alas, everything worked out fine!
"What's this dot-dot-point thing mean?" asked the Lids employee as I told him no bag was necessary cause I was gonna wear the had out (he bagged the hat anyhow.)
"Well, it sez more than Ya think it does." I said before pausing a bit, then promptly exiting.
Learn more about The Baseball Cap here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_cap