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. . . .