The mall in our town is surrounded by an open-air parking lot you can see on approach from the interstate. It stretches to the horizon and it’s always full. Around the holidays, cars back up at that exit sometimes a quarter mile or more.

Why this sight doesn’t serve as a warning to any sane person I’ll never know. That parking lot is an asphalt-paved River Styx surrounding the Heart of Darkness. It’s a test of fortitude. If you can retain your sanity driving two miles an hour up and down lanes in which you could have sworn you just saw an empty space, but that “space” inevitably turns out to be a mini cooper tucked between two F-150s, and then you find yourself following the Inevitable Three Women moseying on foot directly down of the center, pushing strollers, and balancing their respective gigantic handbags, smart phones, and triple, venti, non-fat, caramel macchiatos, if you can do that, and your head doesn’t explode into a million pieces, you may have the temperament needed in order to enter. Yay you. You just earned the right to enter Hell.

And it is Hell. No guarantees whether you’ll return. Or if you do, that you’ll be able to find your damn car. So keep that in mind.