A Pleasant Stroll ...

It was a fine Sunday afternoon that I chose to stroll through the mall and browse through the many fabulous stores. I brought along a companion, who, to my delight was happy to wander through the stores, make jokes and keep me company. After killing a few hours through our slow paced, window shopping (much to my wallets delight, I made no purchases), we decided it was time to leave. Now, this is where things began to get weird.

As we were walking along, almost to our destination of the car parked in the crowded parkade, we passed a small shop at the end mall that looked as though it was only frequented by those of the geeky or nerdy variety. Maybe I'm wrong, but in the many times I've gone on adventures through this particular part of the shopping centre, there have been a very select few people in this store who fit the stereotypical definition of nerd. The mean side of my companion and myself came out at this point, making jokes and remarks about the few people we saw in the store, labouring over whatever sort of project they may have been tackling at that point in time.

Once we had laughed at what we thought to be hilarious jokes and made our way through the double doors into the parkade, we rounded the corner and were shocked by what we saw. Now, we weren't nearly as shocked as the person we now faced was. We had come face to face with what appeared to be a young man dressed in full viking gear; helmet complete with horns along with fuzzy, what looked to be leg warmers. This was something I don't think that anyone would expect to see on a busy Sunday afternoon at a shopping mall. This "viking" was shocked to see anyone come around the corner and presumably believed he could just sneak unnoticed to his destination, whatever it may have been. He looked at the two of us with a complete "deer in the headlights", as my companion later described it, look and then scurried on past to whatever viking event he was supposed to be attending.

The shock of this unexpected sight caused neither of us to say a word to each other until we arrived at the car. Both of us mirrored each others looks of utter disbelief at what had just happened. Once we were in the safety and quiet of the car, the laughter and many exclamations of "what was that?" and "what did we just witness?" began.

Now, if anyone could explain to me where this supposed viking was going or what he was participating in that required such a ridiculous outfit, it would really solve the mystery of what at first seemed to be like any other Sunday afternoon.