Malls are places where big people get effectively slammed around by little people.

I know I’m not alone among men in regarding the experience of walking through any crowded shopping mall as only slightly preferable to having to go to the doctor for a prostate check. What is it about the experience? Typically we mutter something about "the crowds," and change the subject. But what is it really?

Well, in my case, it actually goes something like this:

There’s a seemingly endless series of narrowly-missed collisions, with some people zipping and darting so close in front of me that I nearly can’t zig out of their way fast enough or "put on the brakes" in time.

At the same time, I have to cope with people from the exact opposite end of the spectrum, who progress through the merchandise with all the measured and stately deliberation of a bridal party making its way up to the altar. There is nothing intrinsically objectionable about this latter behavior—except that the people who engage in it also seem to have an inordinate fondness for walking five to seven abreast. (Additionally, they have a way of walking faster when anybody attempts to go past them.)

Trying to keep bridal walkers from turning my hundred-yard walk into a full afternoon’s expedition, while at the same time continually dodging imminent collisions with impulse-darters, produces a cumulative sensation of being almost literally and physically slammed around--and a sense of deep existential kinship with those shiny metal balls in the pinball machines.

Is there anything that can be done about the nature of the experience?

I have to admit, I sometimes fantasize perversely about removing the social taboo about actually crashing into other people--you know, just making it all like one big football game. I mean, for my part, I’m a reasonably big guy, I’ve played a contact sport or two, and I think I’d probably do okay in that kind of environment.

What about smaller people? Well, admittedly, the fantasy doesn’t concern itself very deeply with their concerns. (Hey, it’s my fantasy!) But I believe the key may actually be fairly simple: just don’t create so many imminent-collision situations.

In my experience, it’s the littler people who tend to create the majority of such stressful encounters in the first place. When I have to burn shoe leather in a full-on panic stop, or execute a hard last-minute avoidance maneuver worthy of an F-18 pilot, it’s almost invariably to avoid some little bitty sprig of a person with whom a collision wouldn’t have been all that awful in the first place. It is tempting, therefore, for me to fantasize that if everybody would just take a little more responsibility for their own safety in dealing with the possibility of a "pedestrian crash," we could all enjoy a general upsurge in both judgment and courtesy.

(Maybe.)