I am hurled into shopping like a child thrown to hammerhead sharks. : The Shop And Drop Syndrome

I was in the center of the Promenade Mall on Friday night, which is a mall in Woodland Hills that looks very much like a mall, when a middle-aged gentleman walked up to me and said, “Can you tell me where the mall is?”

I studied him for a moment to assure myself he was not one of those mall perverts you hear so much about and then replied, “You’re in it.”

He blinked his eyes and focused as though he had just regained consciousness and then in a tone of true gratitude said, “Oh, thank you, thank you so much,” and walked off humming.

Were I a man of lesser experience, the encounter would have left me perplexed, but I have been around the Horn a few times, if you know what I mean, and knew exactly what was going on.

The poor guy wasn’t a mall pervert and he wasn’t, as a friend of mine says, a house with no lights. He was simply suffering from the American Male Christmas Comatose Syndrome.

AMCCS, as it is known, afflicts men of all ages who are suddenly required, by the necessity of the season, to simultaneously spend money they know they don’t have and to think of other people before they think of themselves.

Women have no problem with this since the ability to spend money they know they don’t have is a synaptic dysfunction passed on through the genes.

Thinking of others first is also physiological, having to do with fat in the blood stream and the dynamics of bearing live young.

If I ever needed proof of that theory it was all around me in the Promenade.

Striding down the corridors were little fat ladies dragging screaming white children with names like Meegan and Heather, and black mothers hauling kids named Tiffany and Amaretto.

They were loaded down with packages, which indicated they had been shopping for a long time, but that didn’t seem to affect either their stride or their immense enthusiasm.

Their men were something else. White guys with big cigars who looked as though they were ready to die were sprawled on wooden benches next to tall black dudes who were praying to just live through the night.

There were even a few brown guys around leaning against the plate-glass windows of fashionable boutiques, staring into space and looking like they had just been gored, while their wives spent their way through Bullocks Wilshire.

Recognizing the Male Christmas Comatose Syndrome is no guarantee that you are not going to fall victim to it. It even got to me Friday night.

I am not given a terrific amount to do at Christmas. My family knows that I can end up unable to function at all if required to undertake a job more complex than turning left at the next stop light.

As a result, my wife takes care of most of the holiday details and I am left to peck away at my word processor, which involves only the ability to write and not necessarily the ability to think in abstract terms.

However, buying presents is not something she can do for me, since the presents I have to buy are for her.

I therefore am hurled into the mainstream of shopping like a child thrown to hammerhead sharks, an innocent among man eaters.

I was armed with credit cards and blank checks, but I didn’t know which credit cards were still good, and I have absolutely no idea how much is in my checking account, owing to a $300 dispute with the Bank of America.

When I mentioned this to my wife she said cheerfully, “Don’t worry about it,” which, as I mentioned before, is why women are able to sail through the stormy seas of shopping without damage to their rigging.

But, as my mother used to say to me, Mexicans do worry a lot, so I was already concerned about paying the bills even before I entered the first store. The concern intensified as the hours went by, eventually destroying the small arteries in my brain and paralyzing my ability to make a decent decision.

The irony here, you see, is I was being taken by AMCCS even though I was aware of its deadly potential.

Twice I stopped at a place in the mall called the Magic Pan and had vodka martinis shot directly into my veins as an inoculation against the disease.

One can tell the degree of my determination to prevent contamination simply by the actions I took. I would never drink in a place called the Magic Pan unless I was attempting to avert a crippling pathology.

Preventive measures, however, were useless. I gained consciousness several hours later holding a pair of brass bookends, which were in the shape of naked ladies dragging free-flowing robes.

I guess they are dancing ladies, perhaps of the nymphette persuasion, although I suppose they could just be fun-loving singles who have consumed too many strawberry margaritas.

It’s hard to tell with naked ladies sometimes.

I have no idea where I bought the bookends or how much I paid for them, but I know my wife will understand. It won’t be the first time she has had to deal with the consequences of the American Male Christmas Comatose Syndrome.

She’s still trying to figure out what to do with a crystal soap dish in the shape of an open palm that I got her last year.