The mall

Sun Valley Mall, Sticker Sheets, and a Safer World

I loved going to Sun Valley Mall in Concord, CA.

In the early 90s, if I got a few dollars — babysitting money, birthday money, change my mom slipped me — I knew exactly where I was going. Past the fountain, past the food court with the Orange Julius smell, straight to the Hello Kitty store. Later it turned into the Sanrio store, but to me it was always the Hello Kitty store. Pink walls, tiny erasers shaped like toast, pens that smelled like strawberries.

I loved stationery. Hello Kitty stationery first — the pale blue paper with her face in the corner, the matching envelopes that sealed with a little heart sticker. Then Lisa Frank stationery — those neon dolphins, the rainbow unicorns, the folders that didn’t match anything in my backpack but made me feel rich. I’d spend an hour deciding between the trapper keeper with the tiger or the one with the dancing aliens.

Because stationery wasn’t just paper. Stationery was friendship.

I wrote to my many pen friends. Constantly. I made friendship books — those folded, decorated pages you mailed to one person, who filled them out and mailed them to the next. “Name, birthday, favorite color, favorite All-4-One song.” We passed them around the country. I met new people through ads in the back of teen magazines: “14/F/CA loves horses and New Kids on the Block, seeking pen pals worldwide.”‍ ‍

And it was safe.

I put my full address on the envelope. Mt. Diablo High School girl, Concord, CA, 94520. Strangers wrote back. We traded stickers. We traded cassette tapes. We traded pieces of our lives. No one told us not to. No one had to. The world felt smaller, but kinder.

My life was different in the 90s.

Sun Valley Mall wasn’t about “content.” It was about contact. You went to be around people. You sat on the benches and watched couples hold hands. You tried on lip gloss at Claire’s and didn’t buy it. You bought one sheet of Lisa Frank stickers for 99 cents and made it last a month, cutting them carefully so you didn’t waste them.

Writing letters made me slow down. I had to think about what I wanted to say. I had to wait two weeks for a reply. The waiting didn’t kill me — it built the friendship. When that thick envelope finally came, with someone else’s handwriting and maybe a sprinkle of glitter inside, it felt like Christmas.

We didn’t “follow” each other. We chose each other. We didn’t “unfriend” with a click. If the letters stopped, you wondered if they were okay. You hoped they were.

I’m 51 now. I do my PhD homework on a laptop. I know how to use AI. But part of me is still that girl at Sun Valley Mall, counting dollar bills, buying Hello Kitty stationery, running home to write to a girl in Ohio I’d never met.

Social media tells you to be careful now. Don’t post your address. Don’t trust strangers. And they’re right — the world changed. But I’m grateful I got to grow up before it did.

I’m grateful I learned how to make friends with paper and pen.

I’m grateful I knew a mall as a place to belong, not just to buy.

I’m grateful my 90s life taught me that connection takes time, and stamps, and the risk of being real.

I still keep a Hello Kitty pen in my desk drawer. I don’t use it much. But some days, when the world feels too fast and too online, I take it out. I hold it. And for a minute, I’m back at Sun Valley Mall, 15 years old, with a pocket full of friendship and a whole afternoon to write.

That girl is still in me.

And she still believes the best friends are the ones you have to wait for.

*Cathrynmharris