The Perfect Song Blog

So in the last post I was in Wal-Mart trying to buy my seed starter kids, seeds, storage crates and T-Gel shampoo. I was after the crates when this huge couple appeared in front of me. Aside from crying, spoiled kids with a helpless mother, nothing makes me more uptight than large people who take more than a fair allotment of space in the world.

This couple was composed of a 6-foot, 250-pound human in jeans so tight they had to have been put on by a construction crew.

Her boyfriend was even bigger, lumbering along in a daze that he had been born with.

I was directly behind them so I can tell you with authority that side-by-side they were wide enough for a truck license.

They held hands, meaty hands. While this was nice and loving in a big, meaty innocent way, all they were doing was staying in my way. They were slow. Of course they were slow. Part of me understood that.

When you’re forcing this much mass to move, your velocity never shifts out of first gear. I found an opening by a garden hose display and veered left.

An aisle later, closing in on my T- Gel , I ran into an old, bent lady plodding with a walker.

Don’t get me wrong. I love old, bent ladies with walkers. They are the white-haired salt-of-the-earth, still determined to be a part of society, which is to say, they’re damn well going to shop at Wal-Mart. The one downside of old ladies with walkers is they’re scary. I have this neurotic feeling that at any given moment their determination can turn into rage and the walker will become a weapon of destruction.

I can just see this lady – repressed and misunderstood all her life, finally rising in a burst of animal strength nurtured by decades of seething, silent anger, bringing the aluminum walker crashing down on my unsuspecting male head and smiling with a wild triumphant look in her pale eyes: “I’ve always wanted to do that. You didn’t think I had it in me, did you? You male chauvinist T-gel using pig. Pick up your seeds and get out of my way!”

I cautiously avoided the little old lady, grabbed my shampoo and rushed to the check-out where a cashier associate punched the numbers with skill created by practice, swung my bag around on the turnstile and said “Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.

“Have a nice day.”

I have mentioned in several posts that I hate “Have a nice day.” The vast majority of “nice day” users don’t mean it and if they thought about it at all would probably realize they want their day to be as rotten as theirs.

I took my bag and headed out as the wizened 75-year-old dude in his baggy blue vest at the exit door looked at my receipt , nodded and said, “Have a Good Day” in a way that said “My legs are killing me.”

I stepped out in the parking lot. Mission accomplished.

It’s a really big parking lot .

I know my car’s out there somewhere. . . .

When I go a store, I don’t go to shop. I’m a male. I’m going for things I need.

I am not shopping.

Having made that clear, I realize that when I go to a store, something changes in me. The day-to-day laid back, I-love-everybody Dennis Miller undergoes a change. It’s subtle and it’s massive.

I want what I’m going after and I want no one in my way. On my way to say, Wal-Mart, I watch the traffic and try to get the lane lead when the light turns green. If I’m coming up on a traffic light and it turns yellow, I bump the gas pedal and slide under it, hoping there’s not a cop around working toward a quota.

I arrive at Wal-Mart which I have a love-hate relationship with (as I do all stores, except the Apple Store, which I’ve never shopped in which explains why I love it). I find a parking spot with two goals:

1. To get as close as I can

2. To remember where I parked.

I go in, knowing what I want:

1. Seed starter kits.

2. Seeds

3. Storage crates

4. Shampoo –T-Gel, the only thing that controls my psoriasis

I know what I’m after. I know where they’re located. I move quickly, purposefully. An old man is shuffling in front of me. I tell myself I’ll be in his shoes one of these days but this isn’t the day and I let him eat my dust.

I round the corner of an aisle and nearly slam into a mother and three kids under the age of ten. This is the worst possible age combination group. Two kids are jumping, dancing and one is crying because the spoiled brat didn’t get the latest piece of red-painted poisonous toy from China.

I feel myself getting uptight because I have to slow down and put on a pasty fake smile of politeness masking my impatience and hopefully showing a cardboard façade of relating to the mother. (I do not relate because I am a male and the crying spoiled little barbarian should have been stored in his cave).
I scoop up the seed starter kits and head for the seed display. A Korean woman looking at the seeds asks if it’s too early to plant them. Yes, I say. It’s too early. She asks when a good time is and I want to say “go ask a Wal-Mart Associate, the vested experts making minimum wage and no benefits. They would love to expound on the best time to plant your seed.”

But I don’t.

I head down the aisle for the storage crates. A couple appears from behind a display in front of me and ambles. Do you have any idea what ambling is and what it does to me?

I’ll tell you in the next post

Okay, here’s the danger of being an ebayholic. A few weeks ago I came across a lot (collection) of vintage paperbacks. Popular Library. All published in the 1940s. I studied them. They were all in good shape. Two of them, I knew, were worth about $70 each.

I wanted them.

I put in a bid of $15. They just sat for a week with no activity. Then someone bid $17. So I immediately bid $20. No one else bid. We were down to three days, then two.

Then a dealer came in and outbid me. I let it sit until the night the bidding ended. I went in and bid $25. I was outbid. I went to $30.

Outbid again.

How much was I willing to pay? I figured I could go to $50, so I punched in the numbers. I had winning bid.

There was an hour left. I went on and did other things, forgetting the bid. At the last minute—literally– I remembered and rushed back to the site. The dealer had outbid me!

I threw in a new bid, putting me up to $60. I was outbid.

Now I was in a mode of combination panic and competiveness. With 33 seconds left I rushed to the keyboard and typed in $70. I hit the bid button, then the confirm, hoping I could get through with just the few seconds that were ticking away.

The moment I hit the confirm button I realized that after the$7 I hit the 0 button twice.

I had bid $700!

I broke into a cold sweat. $700 is like my life savings. Then I realized that eBay only takes your bid in 10% increments. But what if he had bid $200 or $300? Time moved so slow that if a hummingbird had passed in front of me I would have seen its wing movement.

Finally the sign came up that I had won the bid. Of course I had won. I’m an idiot who bid $700! I looked, cautiously (terrified, actually) to see what I’d actually paid.

I was relieved to find that I got out of it for a relatively low $97.

I walked away, lesson learned.

Actually, I’m not really sure what the lesson is except, if you’re an ebayholic, for God’s sakes, don’t panic.