Suburban Nightmares and Being An Old

I was thinking about The Leftovers and the other things that Perrotta has written while I was in one of my periodic nighttime moments of wakefulness and I was realizing that I do not understand much about the suburban world that he has developed so well. I do not understand the mores and I fail to grok the underlying tension. I am wondering if it is malaise or some sort of post-consumer ennui. Now by saying this, I am not underestimating that there are large numbers of people out there (I am beginning to realize that I know quite a few of them) (or that if certain changes had not been hoisted upon me, I would be living this life) but I do not understand them.

Maybe all some people are searching for is the banality of a dream that was artifice from the beginning, created by the Ur-Draper at the start of the period of American dominance (which coincides well with the long decline of the same American dominance) but they still want that dream, no? (Hell, parts of that dream are appealing to me.)

Where it came to be relevant to me was at the Mall. Why was I at the Mall (for the second day in a row on a holiday weekend no less)? HJ77 wanted and needed a netbook to supplement her other technology. (Create a product and people will discover that they have a niche that did not know that they had.) We were at the Mall because we had discovered that Best Buy had the best price of all the retailers (web and brick and mortar) so we schlepped to the Mall. TEA joined us on the trip.

While I was there, I found myself starting to become more and more agitated (with TEA, with HJ77, with everyone around me. I began to hope that we were going to be approached by those annoying Dead Sea Salt sales people so that I have a place to spew my building venom) because it was too...busy. There were simply too many people moving around in a disorganized fashion. Too many people who felt that they were entitled to my space. (Let me be a complete dick here about baby strollers...you don't need a stroller the size of a smallish SUV when you are shopping. Get a Bjorn. If you are not strong enough to carry your child in a Bjorn, maybe you should have considered your fitness for breeding before squeezing out that child of yours. Or, when running your errands, leave the child at home. If you need a babysitter so that you can get some shopping done, just let me know. I will come over and do it just to save those folks that don't particular think that little Zoe is the cutest thing ever from having their toes run over by your H2 of a stroller. And...scene.) And I was...uncomfortable. I was out of my element. I was surrounded by people who were as selfish about their space and time as I am however, they were (in all likelihood) not thinking about this orgy of consumerism as a sign of the death of the individual and the co-opting of the "American Dream" by marketing organizations.

I do not understand this and I think that I am okay with it.