My trip to Wal-Mart by CheezWeezil

Not a title for a novel by any stretch, but hey... this is a blog.

DramaMama has been fighting a nasty yuck-fest being sick, so I went to the store and took the Bear with me. Up until now, he has been relatively easy to shop with, but he is moving into the the phase where everything he sees he wants.

We had a list reminiscent of Santa's of items I needed to get. It quickly became a packing and stacking experiment to see if we could make it with only a single cart. The Bear soon became fixed in his position with groceries piled all around. There was a mysterious "CLEAN UP ON AISLE 5!" call, but we won't go into that.

As is usually the case, the most important items on the list either were not in stock, or required government clearance to purchase, so we bought other stuff instead. So by the time the Bear was just eyeballs and a suit made of frozen Hungry Man dinners, we made our way to the checkout. For some reason there appeared to be two choices: The hundred mile long line or self-checkout.

"I'm not going to self check all this crap!" I said to noone listening.

Then I noticed that there were actually two checkers fed by the same line, but most of the people hadn't spotted the second one who was cleverly hidden behind a large pile of groceries.

Whistling a nonchalant tune, I moved to the second checkout station, with only one person in line in front of me. I soon realized why the items I needed weren't in stock. This lady had her own 18-wheeler backed up to the front doors of Wal-Mart to take her haul home. "That'll be 4 million, eight hundred thousand, five hundred and eight six dollars and eleven cents please dear."

News crews were everywhere filming this unprecedented volume of grocery items. Okay, so I'm exaggerating, sue me.

Anyway, it finally came to be our turn, all of our stuff taking up the entire span of the moving belt. Everything was going fine until about half-way through I realized the DramaMama had sent me with competitor sale ads for price matches on a few of the items.

"Aw, CRAP! Some of this is price matches."

The checker who I will describe as a squaw from the blue-hair tribe of East Mesa, let out a noise of annoyance and irritation. She hailed the manager nearby as I checked the list and discovered that some of the price match items had already been scanned.

The manager shook her head.

"Is it too late?"

"Not if you don't mind starting over."

"Aww CRAP!"

I was about to just bag it and eat the cost, when the manager told the checker that she could void the items and rescan them. A simple task you might think, but the older woman nearly inhaled her false teeth at the prospect.

The Manager showed her how to do it, and I was apologizing profusely. Laser beams carved old lady initials in my forehead... okay... exaggerating again.

She got that all going, basically telling me to cork my gob while she got it done. Meanwhile the Bear is in the cart letting me know that he wants to go home and getting animal crackers everywhere. (He won out on that one.)

About three shift changes later, she finally rung up the total. "That'll be 4 million...." okay, okay, its was only $140 something. I scanned the card, and klaxons blared, men dressed in black descended from the ceiling on ropes...

Okay the card cleared, sheesh.

So I employed four stout Wal-Mart Grandpa's to help me push the cart to the door. By now the frozen Hungryman suit was getting soft, the milk was brown, and the Bear needed a shave.

"Hey Dad dude," the now gruff voice of the Bear said. "Is that your phone?"

I had not even heard it, but took it out and it was ringing. Being phone challenged, I hung up on the caller who turned out to be my dear, ill DramaMama. I called back and was told I needed to pick up The Large Drummer Boy and his sidekick Dreadlock Whitey.

So I traveled to the mall having to make three passes by the designated pickup spot before finding them. I was so frustrated that foul things such as "Darn Soup!" had escaped my lips.

Now, as I mentioned before, there was an item that I needed to get for DramaMama that required goverment clearance to purchase, so I headed to the pharmacy drive-up window.

This time there really was only one line, and it was a hundred cars deep. Blue-hairs on Metamucil runs or something.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Drummer Boy spoke in a most irritated tone letting me know that we would be home already if we had just parked and gone inside.

Did I mention that it is monsoon season and there was horrific lightning and heavy rain going on at the time?

I held my tongue with a comment about how I would also be home if I didn't have to circle the mall 3 times.

So, I finally got to the window and asked for a box of Advil Cold and Sinus which can now only be purchased directly from the pharmacist due to large quantities being stolen and used to produce crystal meth.

Now the guys in black descended from helicopters, took my life history, fingerprinted me and took mugshots, then I had to sign a book.

So after the body cavity search, I was allowed the box of medication for my dear wife.

At last we arrived home and carried in the vast quantities of grocery items.

All in all a rather interesting trip to the store. The highlight of course being able to annoy the matronly checkout Gramma. My work is done.