Our most recent youth group event was a scavenger hunt in the mall, and I was one of the hunted.
For an hour, I skulked around, in a way sheltered from my normal reality: I wore a ball cap, large headphones (Enya and James Taylor helped me tolerate the mall glitz), a scarf, and a long coat. I held in my hand a $4 decaf mocha on ice (I was hot in my coat) until long after its allure faded and I finally tired of slurping whipped cream remnants through the chewed-up straw.
I followed the youth and baited their noticing often quite fruitlessly, most notably when several went up the information desk and started asking questions. I sallied up to the desk, as well, and examined a gift card flyer, until they set off for the other end of the mall, where I watched them via a shop-window reflection. Then I followed them into a smaller wing of the mall.
“There’s nothing here,” the leader of their group said, and they doubled back. I bobbed my head lower and kept on walking, thoroughly enjoying my own anonymity–which ended only thirty seconds later when one of the little twits noticed me.
