Mr & Ms V Do Walmart

So we’d finished buying medical necessities, in the HBA section of Walmart, for my husband’s hernia surgery. I asked my husband where the toilet paper was and he pointed, “Over there.” I went in that direction.

All had flowed as smoothly as such excursions into our local ChinaAnnexSuperStore ever do. Well, unless you count the part where my husband balked strenuously at entering a Walmart of the SuperStore ilk. At which point I looked at him like the spineless, wormy, thingamagig he’d become and growled, “And you think *I* want to go to Walmart?”

So we were heading for the paper goods, when I asked, “Where *exactly* are the paper goods?” He said, “I’m not sure, ask him.” Him was a very wide man, with a crewcut, in a Walmart vest, on a ladder. I got closer behind him and said, not loudly, but not softly either, “Sir.”

No reaction. I took another glance at Him’s wide butt, surveyed his thick waist, heavy arms, broad back, and wondered why Him was ignoring me. The store was quiet, almost deserted; unless Him was deaf, Him had heard me. I “knew” I’d been heard by the slight jerk in body posture when I spoke. Yes, I’d been heard, and was being ignored.

I inwardly sighed and thought, “Why do store clerks have to be so passive-aggressive and hostile? Then I remembered we were in Walmart. So I changed tactics.

I raised my voice and said, loud enough to be heard in the next aisle, “Ma’am!”

Ahhh, Him turned around. Remember Pat on SNL? Nowhere near that gender specific. Or small. Or attractive, come to that. Yet, I’m going to guess that Him *could* have been a woman…a passive-aggressive and hostile woman, with no boobs, and no sign of binding or anything else under his tight tee-shirt. No glaringly large adams-apple, or excessively overhanging brow ridge, but, who knows. And who the hell cares anyway? I just needed the paper goods department. It isn’t, never has been, and never will be a secondary sex characteristic to have the ability to give directions in a Walmart.

While I’d been sizing Him up I’d had a flashback to the 1996 remake of the movie Diaboliqe, the part where Sharon Stone tells Isabel Adjani that she has no fondness for women who aggressively flaunt their mastectomies by not wearing prostheses. She said something about politics too. Yeah, I paraphrased that.

So, Him told me where to find the paper goods, I thanked him and moved on to the produce department.

Supposedly Walmart now stocks organic foods. (I read it on the internet.) I couldn’t find any so I asked my husband to ask the produce guy where they were. My husband came back and said, “He said they’re on this side of this aisle.” I said, “Okay,” and did a clinical exam of that side of that aisle. They had bags of unidentified types of assorted apples. The bag said they were organic. I continued examining every item and bag on that side of that aisle.

Oh yeah, we had been “had” by another passive-aggressive Walmart clerk, a clerk equipped with narrow hips, massive brow ridge and nice sized adams apple. (He was wearing a produce apron….) I have no idea what political agenda he might have been serving, but I suspect it might have been the “Only rich people care about organic so f*** ‘em” agenda. To my husband I said, “He could have said the only available organic produce today was bags of apples.” To which my husband replied, “Yeah, I know. God, I hate Walmart.”

Next came a young, fierce looking Chicano man who got cut off and boxed in by some old hag on the paper goods aisle.

He was trying to enter the aisle behind this Anglo b**** who stopped her cart the second it turned into the aisle, then walked clear to the other end of the aisle, blocking the young man, and forcing him to await her return. I was facing him on the other side of the aisle boxed in by an empty cart in front of me, and a full one behind. The young man looked around obviously irritated, like “WTF?” He looked at me and I raised my hands in the international symbol for “I’m boxed in too.” He made a wry face and so did I.

He kept looking around and put his hand on the woman’s cart. I nodded with the international facial expression that says, “Oh yeah, you’ve got the right.” He pushed her cart away, and came down the aisle toward me with his face wearing the international facial expression that says, “What else could I do?”

I smiled broadly and said, “Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” while cocking my head to the left and raising my hands in helplessness. He said, “Yeah,” and then he burst into laughter, and kept laughing as he went down the aisle.

Eventually we stood in the checkout line behind a lovely Chicano family whose dad and approximately 8-month-old baby had identical haircuts – one quarter inch long top hair, extending down about an inch onto the sides and backs of their heads, and shaved below. I don’t know the name for the hairstyle, but that baby was too young to have already begun advertising its parents’ political agenda. Aww, hell, I don’t care so much about that. He was too pretty for that haircut! We old women do like us some pretty babies.

Well, mom and dad weren’t all that much older than the baby. Some day they’ll cringe when they look at that haircut in the family album. This morning, they looked like a sweet caring family, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be laughing while they wince.

Finally I was close enough to see the checkout clerk. *sigh* I had been in the midst of angry passive-aggressive people with various personal agendas since I hit the store, and it looked like I wasn’t going to get through the checkout process without encountering another one. This guy’s entire body spoke of agenda. I didn’t know what his agenda was, but I hoped it wouldn’t be, “I hate working at Walmart, and want everyone who shops here to die.”

He was about 20, tall, broad shouldered, fit, dressed in very dark loose clothes, had dead white skin, (he and I could have shared makeup, and I’m fish-belly white) somewhat fine features for a big fella, and the loudest, darkest, red dye-job I’ve ever seen on way-past-shoulder-length hair. All he needed was black fingernail polish, ten face piercings, and numerous arm tattoos to be the model for the “Goth-Hackers 2009 Salute You” poster.

I steeled myself to continue presenting my happy, smiling, I-don’t-know-what-you-mean face.

We had a lot of HBAs and paper products. Like a couple of years worth. Hey, I make every trip to Walmart count, but, as I said to my husband when he said four cans of foot spray was too much, “You won’t feel that way six months from now when hyper-inflation has set in, and this stuff is $18 a can instead of $5.” So, yeah, we had an amazing amount of stuff, all of it in multiples.

As the dark, yet pale and colorful, clerk began to run our stuff over the scanner he smiled and said, “Prepping?” I smiled brightly, said, “Yeah,” and began to chat. I thought he said prepping, but maybe he said, “preppy.” I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, I was going to be polite and cheerful. It was when he asked, “Have you stored food too?” that I realized he was talking about “prepping for the coming Armageddon.” Aha!

Oh man! There was simply not enough time for Ben (yes, he introduced himself – no name tag) and I to say all we wanted to say. You’d have thought we were a long-lost mother and son. I had found a real, live, flesh and blood, conspiracy theorist, wacko to whom I could relate absolutely! What joy! Ben was all aglow too. We exchanged as much info as we could and said we hoped we’d see each other again. Gosh, it was uplifting. Ben made the trip to Walmart worth ten times the misery I’d gone through!

For starters, all the years of telling my husband that the economy of the US was going to crash, and when it did crash, he still wouldn’t believe me! But there was Ben, talking about laying in supplies of organic dried food with me. My husband was silent with Ben, and about him later. But now he knows I’m not the only wacko who thinks organic gardening and canning food is a reasonable way to spend time. For that alone I was happy.

For ten years I’ve been going to websites that said the US economy was in freefall. Sometimes it all gets too wacky, even for me. And sometimes I get discouraged about what percentage of Americans know what’s going on. I think it’s a pretty high percentage now, but I didn’t expect to discuss it in the checkout line at Walmart.

You know what? I should have expected that. I mean, we could have gone to the dollar store or Target. We usually do for cheap stuff, because Walmart is a truly awful place to shop. But, for a multi-year supply of products used daily by most Americans? Walmart has the lowest prices, even lower than the dollar store.

I think Walmart is evil. I don’t expect that to ever change. But, when my money is involved, I think like the non-rich all over the world: I go where I can stretch my money the farthest, and try hard not to think about all the people who are being oppressed by my financial support of evil empires. Isn’t that one of the defining characteristics of an evil empire, that they first box people into corners of dependence, then oppress them?

But there are Bens lurking in evil empires, and as I wrote elsewhere, there are Bettys rebelling with kindness, from inside evil empires.

It was an interesting Sunday morning. It was good stuff.