Entering Wal-Mart

I exited the vehicle with that determination which I always acquire when venturing into that store called Wal-Mart. As I stroll across the parking lot, my step hastens, for my plans are to get in the store, purchase my batteries and then exit. Preferably doing all this while still keeping my sanity. Though the action of entering Wal-Mart is that of usual happening, something done based on whims and quickly acted upon fancies, such as the sudden desire to acquire a package of batteries, the thing is really quite a venture if one thinks about it. The first oddity is one that I noticed before even entering the actual building. As I strolled to the two doors labeled "Enter" and "Exit" I noticed a middle aged woman, attempting to get her child into the car without using brute force. The child appears to be overly enraged do to the fact that she was not able to induce her mother to purchase her an adequate amount of Barbie Dolls. "But you promised you'd buy me two Barbies!" she says accompanied with a few sniffles... and  an over abundance of eye rubbing. My first thought was that of wonder... what induces a middle aged woman to promise her child toys? The answer came, from the mother, who was now making more promises to her child as if to give me an example to answer my question. "I'll buy you two Barbies next time we're in town if you get in the car in 30 seconds." the mother says, with the voice of one arguing with a car dealer over the price of a BMW. This appears to have had some effect on the child, for she is now seated in her proper seat buckling herself in and asking when mother is planning on going into town next. Furthermore she seems to have had a hyper-recovery from the sadness she portrayed a few seconds earlier.

Having taken in as much of this scene as necessary to determine why mothers promise children toys, I continued my walk to the doors of this store called "Wal-Mart". Upon coming close to these doors I noticed a peculiar thing. As I mentioned before, these doors are labeled "Enter" and "Exit". This is all fine except for the fact that everyone was entering through the door labeled "Exit" and exiting through that labeled "Enter". Of course there were a few who followed the signs, whether by purpose or unknowingly I'm not entirely sure. Such as this one fellow, who I believe was comparable in width to a Mini Cooper. He took it upon himself to enter through the enter door, and he took it upon himself to do it at the same moment that about 20 others were exiting through the same door. In this manner he became a rather effective road block, forcing many to exit through the door labeled exit. At this same time I was entering through the door labeled exit, for the reason that I had been traveling behind the man who was comparable in width to a Mini Cooper, and who traveled at about the speed of a lame turtle, I had wished to repair this situation and proposed to do so by traveling through a separate door than him which turned out to be the exit door... as there are only two doors to travel through... and he had taken the one labeled "Enter". Anyway, my plan was not that of extreme success, for the Mini-Cooper widthed man had blocked the enter door forcing many to exit through the exit door, the one I was attempting to enter through. After nearly being runover by an assortment of Mini Cooper widthed people and odd looking teenagers, I decided it best to simply plow through this crowd to the best of my ability and see where I ended up. This I did, and I ended up behind the same Mini Cooper widthed man who had caused me all this trouble in the first place. I was just figuring a way to extract myself from his trail when he stepped upon an automated cart and zoomed off at considerable speed. "Strange" I thought. I had somehow figured these carts were reserved for those people unfortunate enough to be crippled. I then began to wonder at what an extraordinary motor these devices must have in them to be able to transport something the width and probably the weight of a Mini Cooper with such expediency. Putting these thoughts and wonders aside, I continued my trek into the store. I passed the "greeter" who I smiled at, in turn she gave me an overly unpleasant look, as if she was of the desire to shoot me as soon as she could get her hands on an adequate weapon with which to do so. I had now passed her by and gone through those magnet detectors that they like to make you think are put there in order to advertise movies and video games. I spotted myself on a security TV hanging from the ceiling and took the opportunity to analyze and correct my posture... it is not everyday one gets to see himself from a top down view. After straightening my back some and bringing my shoulders up I continued to where I had remembered the batteries being kept. Which was in a sort of large cubicle they keep in front of the check stands. 

While traversing to this location, I saw a young woman who invoked my pity, for her shirt was 3 sizes too small, which created the problem of there being a considerable gap between where her shirt left off and where her jeans started. "Poor girl" I thought "I hope one day she is able to get enough money to purchase a shirt that fits". I then realized that walking next to her was a young man, he had covering his legs, at least the bottom half of them, a pair of jeans that were at least 3 sizes too large. This created the problem of them sagging a great deal, thereby leaving a gap between where his jeans left off and his shirt started, much like the woman he was walking with... only with him it allowed you to ascertain the make, model, and color of his under-trousers. At this point I thought perhaps I should walk up to this fellow and hand him a twenty, so he could purchase for himself and his mate some articles of clothing that fit properly and did not leave disturbing gaps here and there. But I then realized that there were an assortment of about 8 other young men and women walking behind him who were sporting the same gappy attire. I then realized that this man might have his pride hurt to be offered money in front of his friends, and if this wasn't the case, that the others would want twenties as well, considering they were clothed just as gappily as he was. Since I only had 2 twenties I thought this might turn out badly, and so abandoned the idea. I walked on, and finally spied the battery cubicle. The unfortunate thing was that it was surrounded by people. I was wondering why they were all facing the same direction when I suddenly realized they were actually part of a checkout line. A 500 yard long checkout line.... or something comparable to that I'm sure. I looked at the big numbered lights the cashiers use to let you know which checkstands are open and only saw two that were steady on, another was blinking. There were an assortment of "Self Checks" open, but these were rather popular at this moment and so were creating just as long of lines as the standard checkouts. I realized that even after I succeeded in getting close enough to a package of batteries to obtain them, I would be detained another long bit of time attempting to get out of the store with them legally.

I decided to go to the electronics department to see if I could locate any batteries in that vicinity, the idea of at least having the item I came into this place for in my hand giving me some sense of satisfaction. Also, hopefully by the time I came back from the electronics the 500 yard lines would have dispersed to some degree. In order to make my way to the electronics department it was necessary that I pass by the jewelery department. The young woman behind the counter there smiled at me, and I smiled back, happy to see a happy face. I thought perhaps they ought to have her switch places with the greeter. For then, not only would people get to see a lovely smile when they entered the building, but no one would ever think of illegally obtaining any jewelery from this place, for fear they would be tracked down and strangled in their sleep. I then passed through an assortment of clothes racks, full of mens clothes. I spotted a pair of jeans that I would have sworn were second hand, for they were more holy than righteous. Thinking this interesting, that Wal-Mart would start selling second hand things, I walked over and glanced at the price tag. Then I glanced at it again. After that I afforded it a good hard look, for if I were not mistaken it read "$32.99". Considering the article appeared to certainly be second hand I had figured the price would read accordingly "$3.99" or "$4.99" or something of that sort. But $32.99!? Goodness gracious, my perfectly good jeans purchased from Bi-Mart did not cost but $9.99. I then took it upon myself to read the other price tags of the other second hand jeans and found them to read exactly the same. It was while doing this that I realized that all the jeans had holes and worn spots in exactly the same places. I thought that either the same man had worn them all and apparently did the same activities in them day by day, or that jean manufacturers were in fact creating jeans with holes and worn spots in them. I took the former scenario to be true as the latter was absolutely absurd.

Exiting this location I continued to make my way to the electronics department. I knew they kept the batteries in this vicinity and so began the usual "quick searching" that is required to walk hastily down a main aisle, look down the other perpendicular aisles and still not run into Mini-Cooper widthed persons. During this procedure I counted 14 people with oddly colored hair atop their head and 19 with unusual piercings. I began to wonder if strange had become the new normal. Finally I located a wall of batteries and began an examination of my options. It turned out I could either purchase an 8 pack of AAA's for $10.98, a 4 pack for $6.99 or a 24 pack of some off brand which I could not find the price of. Suddenly I sensed someone was near me. Always liking to know the make and model of any persons that might be in my vicinity, I looked about me to ascertain this information. It turned out to be a rather large fellow, he appeared to be browsing the batteries in search of something. I was about to remark on how wonderfully color coded his attire was when I realized the back of his vest read "How may I help you?" To answer this question I spoke "Could you tell me how much these cost?" The vest did not respond... which I suppose should not have been surprising now that I think about it, but instead the man wearing it turned around and said "Can I help you." Now, I have always been under the impression that questions should have question marks found after them, so as to be more easily identified as questions. As in "Can I help you?" Well, his didn't. And that coupled with the fact that his vest had already asked a very similar question of me, caused me to stop and ponder for a moment before responding. Perhaps seeing my pondering expression, the man spoke further. "You want to know how much those cost?" he said, pointing to the package of batteries I had in my hand. This time, his question actually had the sound of a question, and so I responded more quickly, "Yeah." I said. I had expected him to blurt out a number of some sort at this point. Such as "$17 dollars and 99 cents." Or something along those lines. But as it turned out he knew just as much as I did, and so began searching all the price tags on the wall looking for one that referred to the package of batteries I had in my hand. For some reason the thought entered my head "I could've done that.", but not wanting to harm the man's feeling of usefulness I did not actually speak those words. The fact of the matter is that I had already used this method of discovering the price, and having not succeeded did not hold much hope for this fellow discovering the price in the same manner. I began to speak something about it not really being all that important, and I didn't want to take up too much of his time when he reached behind him and displayed a form of gun. This startled me at first, but I then realized it was one of those barcode readers. He ran the package in front of it and stared blankly at the screen. After repeating this process a number of times he spoke. "They're twenty two ninety nine." he said. "Oh good, thanks." I responded. "Mmhmm." he replied. Finding the content of this conversation growing thin, I decided to terminate it and exit the battery department. This I did, the 24 pack of batteries in hand, and began strolling to the checkout area.

I then remembered that I had been of the desire to purchase a new Maglite, my own miniature model being 9 years old and rather dead. They are tough instruments, but something about me having taken it apart in a blizzard and dropping it in the process seems to have had an undesirable effect upon it. Particularly considering the fact that I believe I lost a few important parts in the process. All said, I pictured in my head where the flashlights were kept and began my journey to that destination. This required that I pass through the toy department. Here I saw a very young boy throwing Hot Wheels on the floor. This would not have particularly caught my attention aside from the fact that I also heard distinct yelling. Upon investigating I found the yelling to be emitting from what appeared to be the mother of the child.  From her mouth were coming at a rather rapid rate a string of mild oaths and threats, which appeared to be directed at the child. This did not seem to effect him though, and he continued with his happy pursuit of seeing how many Hot Wheels he could make his mother pick up. In response she reverted to less mild oaths and even less milder threats. As I walked on I began to wonder what the child's first words would be. This not being a pleasant thought, I directed my thinking faculties to the task of figuring out why I was now in the athletics department instead of that which contained the flashlights. I looked about me and discovered that on the far wall, there was an impressive array of flashlights. "Aha!" I thought. I may of actually said it, which would explain why that one lady gave me a strange look. Anyway, after passing the Mini Cooper widthed man in the cripple cart looking at paintball guns I came to the wall of flashlights, my destination. I found my desired Maglite, checked the back to make sure they were still made in U.S.A. and began my trek back to the front of the store to purchase my items.

As I neared the front of the store, I found to my astonishment that there were no more than a total of 5 parties standing in line to be checked out. Where everyone went I haven't the slightest idea. As I only had 2 items and did not feel like listening to people cuss at the self checking machine, I headed for the lane labeled "15 items or less". The checker, or checkette rather, asked if I had found everything alright, to which I replied "I hope so" and began digging through my wallet looking for the correct amount of cash. After a moment I realized the answer "I hope so" did not actually make a great deal of sense... I began to ponder this further and considered saying something else to convince the woman I did not always speak in a confusing manner, but she was now handing me my change and saying "Have a great day". At an attempt to be as clear and unconfusing as possible I replied "Yes." She handed me my bag, I smiled at her, she smiled back, and I began walking toward the doors of the building. I now realized that the answer "Yes" in response to "Have a great day" was not altogether without oddity. "Well", I said to myself, "At least it was original". I may have spoken this out loud which would explain why that one lady was looking at me funny again. I went back through the magnet detectors, smiled and gave a thumbs up to the greeter, and then went out the door labeled "Enter".

The content of this story is entirely fiction and is not intended to be meant or taken as a factual account.

~ Nick A. Crawford.