Melissa's Place

Burlington Mall

I decided that yesterday evening was as good a time as any to begin my Christmas shopping. My friend Alison was willing to drive out to Burlington so we could attack the nearby Burlington Mall. I wanted to be sure it would be worth the drive, so I went onto Google and looked up the Burlington Mall and checked the hours. To my surprise, it was open to 10pm every night of the week except Sunday. Wow, I thought.

So when Alison phoned to say she was running a bit late, I figured it didn’t really matter much. She rolled up my street around 8:30 and we headed over to the mall. I remember commenting on how surprised I was that there were so many good parking spots. We walked through the mall and plotted about the stores we would go into, just as soon as we had emptied our bladders. After the Washroom stop, we got in line at Tim Horton’s in the Food Court in order to power our bodies with a caffeine jolt.

While we were in line, we had the following conversation.
“What’s Black Friday?” I asked.
Alison explained that it had something to do with sales.
I mentioned that apparently this week at the Burlington mall the stores were opening at 6am instead of 9am because it was Black Friday Week. Alison thought that was strange because Black Friday is a shopping tradition associated with American Thanksgiving.
“I guess they’re copying the States” she figured.

Finally ready, with tea and muffins in hand, feeling relieved and revived, we turned from the Food Court to the main stores only to see the wave of sliding metal cage-doors sliding across their entrances. I was dumb-founded.

“Is Old Navy closed?” I asked.

“I think they’re all closing,” Alison observed.

“But the website said they were open until 10pm….”

Then I think it all came together for Alison and I at the same time. While it was occurring to me that there might be a second Burlington Mall somewhere in the developed world, she might have said half of “There’s a Burlington in Vermont” before she broke out laughing so hard she choked on her muffin.

We went to Chapters. Good, reliable Chapters. Open late every night. And we didn’t get our shopping done, but she did seem to think it was worth the drive just to see me make such a funny mistake.

Epilogue:
Upon revisiting the site, I realized that a few things should have tipped me off:

1. When I typed “Burlington Mall” into google, the first site to came up mentioned Ontario, but I apparently skipped over that to the second site.
2. The address said Burlington MA (which is apparently Massachusetts).
3. If one was to click on the Map link, they’d see the Burlington Mall isn’t too far from Boston.