Why are you staring?

Wal-Mart

First and foremost I want it to be known that I hate Wal-Mart, aka Wally World.

You heard it right, I hate Wal-Mart...now don't misunderstand me, I'll shop Wal-Mart. I'll shop the shit out of it! Before I go though I have to put on body armor (and when I say body armor I'm not talking about light weight Reynolds Wrap and a "spork", I'm talking about some Knights of the Round Table Sword Pulling King Arthur type stuff), grab a flak vest, draw up a plan of escape, take between 15 and 17 Tylenol or whatever I have lying around, meditate, find my friggin' "center" or whatever it's called, take deep breaths and GO. All this just to keep me from talking myself out of it. Let one thing deter me or be interpreted by me as a "sign", like not being able to find my keys before the count of five, and the trip is off!

My intent was to go in there put dishes, bedding, towels, silverware, etc., on layaway and bolt out through the exit door like Johnny Depp was on the other side waiting for me. That was the intent. The reality was that I went in there at 4 p.m. made my exit at 9:30 and didn't really even do anything! Sure I got some of the things I wanted but not everything because the melee of shoppers coupled with the realization that there were 100,000 people in the store, 24 registers functional but only four of them in operation, I forgot most of the stuff I wanted to get.

Now I come to the point where I have all this crap to pack for the move and no boxes. Soooo, I call Wal-Mart. I see Wal-Mart the way other countries see America....hate it 'til it's needed. So I called the abyss, I mean store, and a nice lady answered. I asked her if I could get some boxes and she told me that "freight is dropped off and unloaded at 10:30 p.m. and any boxes had to be picked up by 7:30 a.m." at that point they were crushed and thrown out. I weigh my options carefully...a "carefully" that took me all of 1.2 seconds or whatever time it takes for the words "there is no flippin' way I'm getting up at 7:00 in the morning to go get boxes" to register in the brain. I look at the kids and say, "Kids?" and they look at me and say, "No, we don't want to go." I hadn't even told them anything yet but they protested, determined they weren't going and there was nothing I could do to make them.

Later on that night at Wal-Mart the kids and I started scouting out boxes. It was really pathetic if you think about it. I felt like I was stalking people (which is something I have NO previous experience in, ahem). "Hey ma'am, when are you going to empty that big box of pillows? Could you set it aside for me? Thanks." I was digging through carts full of boxes like a baglady and if I happened to see boxes being opened at the end of any given aisle I would stop and hold stock still just staring kind of like I heard Sasquatch walking through the leaves in the distance. The kids are like, "What is it mom?" I just stared in the direction of the boxes, putting up my hand ever so slightly, "Shhhhh..." It got so bad that a woman who was taking something out of a box saw me pushing my cart with my vision blocking array of boxes and yelled, "Hey ma'am! Do you want this box?" from roughly 100 yards away. I darted back and got it. I don't know if she even worked there I just took the stupid box.

~~~~~FREEBIE~~~~~

Now in my fourth bedroom I have a bazillion boxes. The thing is, when I needed boxes I couldn't find any but now that I HAVE those boxes every body on the planet can suddenly get boxes for me. My buddy Mark left boxes in front of my garage, my friend Robin can get me boxes, etc, etc, etc.

Thanks Wal-Mart for cluttering up my rooms with huge boxes. Nothing turns a upstanding citizen into a cart-digger faster than an ill-planned move and free boxes.

posted by Shannon Land Post @ 1:48 AM