On Monday, after 39 years, Waterford’s Crystal Mall goes up for auction.

There are lots of anxiety-inducing questions that spiral off from this situation, but none are bigger than: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE FOOD COURT?!

What a lot of folks don’t realize is that there are those among us who regard a Food Court as the only reason to go to a shopping mall — as opposed to actually shopping. I’m one of those people.

No matter what happens at the Crystal Mall auction, I’ll treasure my many happy memories of striding into the Food Court entrance. It’s always the same. I pause to take a wide-pan, appreciative glance at the many culinary options before me, from the Wok Express and moving counter-clockwise past Dunkin Donuts, Sarku Japan, Taco Bell, Charleys Cheesesteaks, the Siamese-twin configuration of DQ and Orange Julius, then down the backstretch of Burger King, Taco Bell and Subway.

I breathe in an olfactory mélange only possible when the scents of shrimp teriyaki, a Beefy Melt Burrito and a chili dog with onions pole-dance together, then throw my arms out wide in joyful possibility like Julie Andrews letting us know that the hills are alive with the sound of music.

“You are ALL my children!” I cry.

Earlier this week, with a sense of dread, I drove over to Crystal Mall. I parked at the opposite end from the Food Court, where the old Sears used to be, so I could traverse the length of the property and assess the situation with my own eyes. I came in by the Buffalo Wild Wings, which I assume will continue to exist.

It’s a popular if eerie place — a house of worship, if you will, for acolytes of televised sporting events whose code of behavior therein has been formulated by commercials that depict tailgating as though choreographed by the Flying Wallendas on a four-day drunk.

Then came the slow walk to the Food Court. My first impression was of vast emptiness. I thought, this must be what it’s like to take one of those Richard Branson/Elon Musk rockets-to-the-stars adventures, only without any galaxies and worrying whether William Shatner, in the seat next to me, might disintegrate into goo as the ship approached that intense 3G acceleration force.

At the bottom of the escalator — which was turned off, by the way — was a skeleton in a cobwebbed Santa suit slumped against a forgotten giant plastic candy cane. Hell, it WAS Santa! Poor fellow must have expired during the holiday season when there were no children around to sit on his lap and request gaming headsets and GoPro cameras.

A LOT of stores were out of business and the windows were covered with paper. Other shops still had merchandise inside but were closed and locked up by those pull-down steel gates you see at pawn shops.

I felt as though I was creeping down Death Row in one of those high-kill Florida or Texas prisons after a rockin’ Saturday night in the lethal injection chamber had emptied out the cells.

I was happy to note a pretzel dispensary was open, and the clerk gave me a heaping portion of cinnamon sugar pretzel bites. Further down the mall, I saw other a sprinkling of customers visiting retail spaces still open for business, including a Mens Wearhouse directly facing an Enzo’s Mens Wear — like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood staring each other down to see who would rent the coolest prom tux.

There was also a dollar store of some kind, an optician, a furniture place and a tennis shoe emporium. But only something called Ice Imports had quantifiable customers wandering among the store’s inventory of katana sabers, dream catchers and a LOT of fairy statuary.

Odd, I thought. The mall is dying — and yet a weirdo store is still popular!

But it turns out the mall WASN’T dying.

At least not where it mattered most. Because I then arrived at the Food Court, and it was bustling with the energy of a beehive — albeit one where the bees had been drinking prescription cough syrup. But people were THERE! And enjoying their Food Court goodies!

That’s when the magic of Food Courts hit me. It doesn’t matter whether you’re flashing your Amex Black Card for an $1,800 Roberto Cavalli crocodile print blazer at a mall like Santa Monica Place — or writing a check (you hope doesn’t bounce) for a pair of cheesecloth socks from the Zippy’s Down ‘n’ Out Mall in Graveyard, New Mexico.

The Food Court is eternal!

I brushed the cinnamon/sugar powder off my shirt, threw my empty pretzel bites bag in the trash, then sidled up to get in line at Charleys Cheesesteaks to decide what to eat next.

All was right with the world.