It was 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. I was taking my wife to work. She worked at the mall at the time, and she was running late. As we turned the corner, smoke curled into the sky like a theatrical plume. We drove through it, coughing and squinting, and saw a car fully ablaze in the opposite parking lot. Flames hungrily devoured the vehicle; it looked like a caramelized marshmallow gone rogue.
“That’s… dramatic,” my wife said, gripping the dashboard.
“Indeed,” I replied. And then, an idea hit me: s’mores.
I had just bought graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows from the Target attached to the mall. Life was fleeting, chaos was immediate, and dessert waited for no one.
We parked at a safe distance. Across the lot, a man was tossing boxes into the fire—evidence destruction, presumably. Smoke drifted toward us, carrying the acrid scent of burned plastic, cardboard, and bad life decisions. I skewered a marshmallow over a tiny candle I’d brought from home. It browned perfectly, golden and patient, unlike the world around us.
“Call the cops!” someone yelled from across the lot.
“I prefer to call it ambiance,” I said. Carefully, we assembled our s’mores. Chocolate melted onto graham crackers. Marshmallow clung stubbornly to both. Around us, chaos continued: a security guard tripped over a fire extinguisher, the perp vanished into a side alley, and a woman walked her miniature poodle past the inferno like it was any ordinary Tuesday.
By the time we got back into the car, the fire had mostly subsided, leaving behind the acrid perfume of destruction. The perp was gone. The world had returned to its usual schedule. But we had s’mores, chocolate, graham crackers, and a perfectly roasted marshmallow. Small victories matter—especially at 10 a.m., in a mall parking lot full of smoke and bad decisions.