As a good consumer on her weekend from work, I spent the afternoon on a shopping jaunt with my mother. We went into a Disney store to pick up half-off clothing for my little brother.

As I waited in line to pay for an armful of glow-in-the-dark Buzz Lightyear t-shirts, I became acutely aware of the chaos around me.

Far ahead of me, two clerks resignedly calculated to themselves that lunch was not forthcoming for the next three hours. In front of me, two frazzled, long-faced parents clutched two kitchsy Mickey and Minnie in Hawaii stuffed dolls as they murmured what a happy child their offspring was -- nowhere to be seen. Just to the right of me, a woman stared straight ahead as the girl over her shoulder bawled and screamed for the Princess Aurora doll just out of her reach. A moment later, the woman flung all the fluttery Aladdin pajamas from her stroller onto a nearby rack and rollered her stroller and her brood, out. A trio of teenagers sauntered through the throng, exclaiming how this was their favourite store.

How I prayed, to whatever gods there are.

As I tried to catch the eye of my mother, who was browsing listlessly, I realized how the place made me feel almost physically ill. I was surrounded, everywhere, by people mindlessly consuming and consuming. Three thousand dollar art prints. Plastic beeping toy cellphones. Whirly things that clacked, spun, and lit up. My eyes washed over the sea of plastic and polyester. Nothing here was original, beautiful, or meaningful, to anyone here or anywhere, and nor would it ever be. It was a complete, utter waste of humanity, supremely represented in this one small space.

Here they were. And here was I.

I explained all of this to my mother as we left the store. At the word "ill", she asked whether it was the noise, the air, or the space, only able to interpret my disgust as something solely physical. In my frustrated second attempt, she interrupted me to comment that she needed to attend to the ladies' room and asked me to take her coat and bags for her.

I, suddenly overcome with a new wave of fatigue, took them.