I just came back from Wal-Mart.
It is 11:41EST. I am a changed woman.
I normally shop at one of the many Hannafords in our area. I appreciate their plentiful organics section and the generally consistent peculiarities of their staff. I can scan the check outs and know which people will ignore, which will whiz me through, and which will dance on my last nerve and have me contemplating a life of solitude, willing to sacrifice coffee and peanut butter to just get the hell away. I don’t have this security with Wal-Mart and frankly the ability of a place to have a parking lot filled to capacity every single time I have ever driven by just weirds me out. Two kids in diapers and going through wipes with dizzying speed, coupled with a boarder who does nefarious things with our toilet paper, clogging our pipes (Sorry Nutmeg) and leaving pitiful little cardboard rolls in place of the fluffy white rolls I set out nearly every day forced my hand.
I had naively thought that somehow shopping at such a late hour would lighten the congestion in the parking lot, perhaps even make the aisles passable with the absence of milling masses. Oh, but I was so, so wrong. I realize that as the more I write, the more of a snob I will sound, but tonight, dear readers, if what I write distances me from the wandering souls that I saw tonight, well than it is just fine. Because oh-my-freaking-god, they had to be trying awfully hard to be that odd. And the cleavage, for the love of sagging and copious cleavage. Walt, the gentle, coke bottle lens wearing greeter who asked me how I was, he should have flashed a sign of some sort, anything to let me know that I was entering an NC-17 zone.
Can you say deep crevasses of panty line and wedgie that simply must have torn flesh? In white shorts? With waves of ass cheek-overflow spilling out like whipping cream from one of those offensive sandwichy-desserty moonpie atrocities…
There was one woman from whom I simply could not tear my eyes, I was grateful for the $1.19 Princess tissues in the top of my cart, for had they not been there I might have slipped in my own drool. My mouth agape, my eyes glazed ever so slightly and my head cocked to hear better, I was riveted as this creature spoke to a fidgety Asian teenager.
Please note that what follows is written as I heard it, these folks did not have chaperones and were as far as I could interpret living independently:
“My huhband and I are gunna git murried and you are gunna be a maiden. Those sequins are what will be on the cake. We didn’t have the marital ceremonies that I wanted so we are re-anewing our vows and YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND TO BELIEVE WHAT THIS WEDDING WILL BE.”
At this point she cackled and adjusted the mightily straining straps of her tank top and bra. The three men, two women who I believe were related to her, and the fidgeter all watched as the swell of her ample chest was hiked up with the straps and then, as she dropped the straps, hurtled toward her belly, falling many, many inches before bouncing off of her belly, dramatically and magnificently out of synch.
“Then we are going to have the wedding I want, and my huhband’ll get the night he wanted. You know I don’t mean like your night. Your night is with a “k”, “knight”, did you know that?”
The teenager fidgeted some more and then scream-giggled that she did.
“I mean the night, what comes after the wedding. I’ll be in sequins like the cake. You want to see my pretty sequins for the night? I don’t have them here but I can show you since you are my maiden.”
When I finally manage to steer my cart I was numb, I had to grab the list and read it several times to ground myself back in reality. I grabbed the last few things on my list and picked a line, three check outs were open, 2 were for 10 items or less, I had significantly more than 10 so I picked the only option I had, knowing with all of my being that the checker was the kind who would make me long for the hills of far off lands.
Standing reading the latest In Touch magazine I tried not to get a hangover from what I imagined as I watched the 50 cans of frozen limeade and raspberry lemonade, a 30 gallon tub, and two large wooden spoons that the girls ahead of me were purchasing with singles and fives from a tattered envelope. They were almost through when I heard Chesty von Wedding Happy yammering on.
“What we need to do is buy us some cigarettes. The ones they have at the place are stale and I don’t like to kiss after stale cigarettes.”
I tried to lose myself in the magazine, but it wasn’t working, I looked around, it was all just too much. More cleavage had rolled up, and a young woman was standing in line, one row over. She was maybe 25, so were the girls behind her, but they were a different 25, the first already looked life weary, the two behind her were rosy cheeked and in athletic mesh shorts. I wanted to melt into the floor as the first girl tried to justify her life, each sentence more preposterous than the last as she explaining away a trip to Wal Mart with stories of $500 fish tank tables and plans to flip her house, though she didn’t yet own it. She talked about having $7K to put down and then she’d rent it, then maybe flip it and buy something nice. She talked about a fiance passing away a month before, about her son who looked just like her. The two girls eyes had started to glaze over as they saw through her story. Then she desperately thrust something at the girls, her phone. “See, he looks just like me, can you see it?” I silently willed her to stop, to just smile and go on her way. Go home to your kids and your life I thought. I didn’t want to ache for this woman, didn’t want to mock anyone.
I don’t know that I can go back, don’t know that I can keep myself from absorbing the stories and eccentricities of the other people there. I wonder if they thought me strange as well, what with my densely stacked items, meticulously arranged and organized to facilitate logical bagging and easier unloading at home. Yes, I suppose they watched me, the girl in the tennis shoes and t-shirt, the lonely woman without a wedding ring on buying diapers and organic snacks. Poor pathetic, granola loving nutball.
You eat granola.
You speak complete sentences and are highly intelligent and thoughtful.
You are in tune with nature and the beauty that surrounds us each day.
What the f*** were you doing at WalMart?
Don't you know that it was confirmed that it is the 7th Ring of Hell?
People like you have been known to not come out alive, or to come out just a shell of a person that entered, completely sucked of their soul. (They use the energy from freshly sucked inner-beings to light the caves where three year olds are putting together barbie dolls and to fuel the private jets of the corporate board, but not to buy benefits for the cashiers working just enough hours in a week not to qualify for benefits, AND to buy life insurance policies in the name of their employees, without the employees knowledge, then to cash them in when the employees kick the bucket).
I hope you went home and took a good, long shower and found yourself intact.
As intact as you can be after living through that horror.
I don't know how, since we live in completely different states, but we MUST shop at the same Wal-Fart. Weird.
OMG JENN – that was Great!!
I avoid all the freaks by not going to our Wal-Mart, although I would shop there if no one else did!
If I find myself in the position of having to go, I avert my eyes and concentrate on my purchases while negotiating the aisles where people leave their carts in the middle and trying not to (I really want to please?) run down any number of the 17 children and family members that all come together and stand around looking up at things with mouths wide open.
It's a terrible thing, that Wal-Mart.
Didn't you know it's not safe to go to Walmart after dark? Well, and before dark too for that matter. I will always remember the time my father left Walmart, got in the car, looked at my mother and asked "where did all those toothless hillbillies come from?" Walmart is a scary scary place.
That said. If there is ever a time that you are trying to find something and have looked absolutely everywhere with no luck… try Walmart. They'll have it.
I haven't been in a Walmart in over two years. I say it's because of Walmart's skeevy company policies and practices, and it is, but really?
It's because of what you just wrote.
Great post.
Aren't you being a little hard on the Wal-Mart shoppers? I mean, really, who does like to kiss after stale cigarettes?
I kid. Scariest, most hilarious Wal-Mart story. Ever.
I avoid wal-mart like the plague! I have sister-in-law who religiously shops there because of the savings, really not worth it in my opinion!
This made my day, thanx.
Chesty von Wedding Happy
oh. sweet tapping dancing jesus.
I love the Super WalMart !!
Are sequins that tasty? Even if they're on a wedding cake?
If you ask me, I think being in Wal-Mart brings out the weird in everyone. I don't know how it happens. But I know that I enter a normal person and have contorted into a strange version of myself by the time I get to the checkout. Maybe those women you overheard were just there a little too long, thus the extra weirdness.
I can honestly count on one hand the times I have been in the hell that is named Wal-Mart. I was probably the most pissed-off person in the world when my local community chose Wal-Mart over Home Depot. Anyway, it doesn't seem to matter which one, which state, which anything – they are ALL exactly as you describe. I am the only one in my family that refuses to go – the savings are not worth it to me!
I find WalMart to be the most depressing place ever. There's nothing like seeing toddlers eating huge candy bars at 10pm or people putting $10 of baby clothes on layaway to make me too sad to shop.
As someone else said, we only go when we REALLY can't find what we're looking for across the street at Target…
I avoid Walmart the best I can. I really do. Until we moved to the middle of nowhere, I never really went.
Then we moved HERE. *shudders* It is the only place within 30 minutes from our house. The closest city is an hour away. Yet there is Walmart in the middle of nowhere attracting all the goodness it does everywhere else. *shudders* I had to get supplies there, it was terrible and yet I am glad it was there.
From now on … we have the basics, the rest is coming through the mail!
Wal-Mart is seriously one of the most depressing places on God's green earth. My parents live on the edge of the Finger Lakes, and when I go home and accompany my mom to the local Wal-Mart, I always feel like going home to my safe guest room and curling up into a ball and just weeping for the horrors I've just witnessed. Yikes.