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. . . .

After I leave the transfer station, I turn right and drive to Wal Mart for a few things. I stand in line and watch Associate Joyce who is 60-ish short, overweight and walks with a limp.

I’ve noticed that a lot of women who work in WalMart are overweight and walk with a limp. I haven’t had time to really study this and compare the number of right leg limpers to left leg limpers, but I think it would be interesting to know.

A considerable number of them are missing teeth, too.

Those Associates are a colorful bunch. I never see them in Wal Mart’s TV ads.

As Joyce rings me up, the woman behind me pushes something on the counter and says, “You can take this, too.”

Joyce looks down: “Hmm. A Praying Mantis.”

Ahh, I think. There’s actually something in Wal Mart that isn’t made in China.

Joyce puts her finger on the counter and the Praying Mantis hops aboard, as if the two of them do this often. (How do you rehearse with a mantis? Patience and prayer, of course). She holds it up as she waddles with a limp over to a cart loaded with empty cartons. She puts her finger down by the handle bar. “Here, get on this,” she says to the Praying Mantis in a conversational voice.

The bug likes her finger, but finally tries to crawl onto the cart. It promptly falls to the floor, most decidedly out of prayer mode. All of us customers stare at it for a minute, decide some things are beyond our control and go back to paying for our goods.

Joyce tells me to have a nice day and sounds like she means it but I’m not sure she does. She’s just good at it.

Over to Tops to pick up prescriptions and supplies. I spend 15 minutes looking in the ice cream freezer for Friendly’s Peanut Butter Cup. A short, stocky woman appears and stands behind me. “Sorry if I’m in your way,” I say.

She shakes her head. “That’s okay. Would you reach up to that top shelf and get me one of those cartons of cherry vanilla? I assess the situation. She’s right. She can’t reach it. I fumble around until I have one.

I leave Tops with my shopping cart full. A man in a small car pulls up to the stop sign to my left. I start to cross when he hits the gas. He sees me and slams on the brake.

The mind is an amazing thing. You can spend an hour thinking about supper or a book your reading. Faced with an emergency, in a split second you can think: Oh my God he’s going to hit me and scatter my groceries all over the place and I’ll be lying in the parking lot bruised and scraped and broken and they won’t let me move until the ambulance arrives and people will be hanging around staring and shaking their heads at the shame of it but they’ve got to get going because they’re on a tight schedule and the ambulance loads me in and I go to the emergency room where they repair me as best they can and put me in a room to recuperate only after my wife as assures them we have insurance and I painfully heal while opening get well cards and I spend the rest of my life walking with a limp . . . .

A few moments later the man parks near me and gets out. He’s a huge black guy who adds 400 pounds to that car every time he gets in it. He waves, “Hey, sorry about that.”

“No problem ,” I wave back. I’m not hurt, your insurance won’t raise and we can get on with the next steps in our day.