Wal-Mart Comes to Walton Mountain

I was shopping with my wife in a Wal-Mart Super Center. It really is America, no matter how many people hate the idea of having one in their town (Brooklyn, CT, are your ears burning?), they still shop in them. I shop as I suspect most men do, in one of two modes and the modes are 'alone' or 'with significant other'. Alone, I am a hunter/gatherer bestriding the aisles as if I were from Bentonville, Arkansas, with the deed to the property in my vest pocket. I push the cart with one hand-and it's always a cart that steers to one or the other side, not straight or has the wobbly wheel or all of the above-as I grab the items from the shelf and pile them high in the carriage. Shopping list? I don't need no stinkin' shopping list! I know what I like and I like what I know and coupons are only something I shop with when I'm in the other mode.

When I'm in 'significant other' shopping mode, if I'm lucky, I get to push the cart (with a bad and ever worsening left knee I appreciate it, but sometimes in a crowded aisle I'm too timid for my wife and she takes control) and generally feel like the tail on a kite, albeit a raggedy tail with a scruff of a beard, a bald spot and grey hair. If we were an A. A. Milne story, I'd be the worst silly old bear imaginable.

The up-side to all this embarrassing shunting to the side is I live in a house that has actual food you can eat at meals and not just Triscuits and cheese squares, which is the FIRST thing I always buy, and lots of both when shopping alone. I also get grapefruit cups by the half-dozen, pink grapefruit, mind you, no matter when I last bought them, so we always have more grapefruit than the Del Monte themselves on their plantation on the Big Island in Hawaii or where ever grapefruit comes from.

Sigrid has the component concept of meal planning and preparation down perfectly-she can buy vegetables and meats and other items and incorporate them all into a 'meal'. For me, a meal is a thing I got in the freezer case and put in the micro-wave. That and Lipton's Chicken Noodle Soup-all you need, when you're me.

Last Saturday, I was the tagalong on the shopping expedition which meant I had to do almost nothing except walk behind the wagon as my wife made sure we would continue to remain alive by buying meal ingredients that she would prepare at home. Her list is organized by aisle and she has coupons and knows what we need and doesn't purchase things that have a 'nice looking box' or 'that sounds pretty good' which is how I shop and explains why we end up giving the charity food pantry in town some of the most exotic canned and dry goods they've ever seen, because by the time I get some of these treasures beyond worth out of the car at home, I've lost interest in ever eating them.

As the tagalong, I get to watch the scenery within the machinery. I watch the old married couples (not us, mind you; yes, it's been thirty-one years but I like to think we're still newlyweds and am confused at the face of the old guy in the mirror on weekday mornings when I go to shave), but the old people, Meryl and Earl (I like to call them) and how they crab shuffle along on fixed and finite incomes in precarious times. I sneak a peek in their shopping cart to see if they have cat food and to wonder if they really have a cat or are trying to save enough money to be able to afford his meds this month.

It's been a little tight since the company he worked for after he came back after his hitch in the Army forty-seven years ago went into receivership and sold off all the assets after the raiders had liquidated everything to include the pension fund. That's an issue, Mr President-Elect, among many that we've danced around for too many years, Sir, and there may never be a better time to devise a solution than right now as you and your party are still basking in the glow of victory and before us pesky ingrates demand that you validate our hopes like we believe you promised to do.

Anyway-I saw a couple with two children, one still sitting in the carriage and the other skipping ahead like a scout before the cart as the mom fussed with the little brother (or sister; it's hard for me to tell sometimes) and dad, or boyfriend (these are Modern Times in which we live my brave friend so never assume anything) looked like an unabashed abject idiot. I was embarrassed for him and I have no sense of style but am redeemed because I have a sense of irony. Some of us, it seems, fell from the very top of the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on our way to the ground.

Unless you're a stevedore, a hod carrier or a house painter, I don't get the purpose behind wearing a bandanna or doo-rag. The pro football morons, the ones who are in for three plays at a time at ten million dollars a season while announcers call them 'warriors', wear them under their helmets and they look stupid, so I'm not sure why this fellow in his late Twenties/early Thirties had one on. It may have been to complement the baggy pants-a look that, since my late Uncle Paul used to call me Droopy Drawers when I was six as he yanked down my dungarees as I screamed in pure impotent anger and fury, I have always hated.

Thank heavens for underwear, but I'd prefer being permitted to staple low hanging trousers to people's bodies up at the hips or perhaps the armpits (I am not without a sense of taste, I can watch Tim Gunn after all (I don't, but I can)) and have contacted the Swingline Corporation asking about an expansion of their product line, but they're still hung up on not making red staplers and have so far been unresponsive.

But it was the shirt, an extravagantly printed tee-shirt, THUGLIFE, that caused me the most head shaking. Meryl and Earl didn't get it-even if they saw it, they didn't get it. And Chris Cretin, the wearer, didn't get it, even though he bought it. All Eyez On Me, indeed. Sure hope the estate sees something from the sales of the shirt, icon status or not. The man left kids and kids gotta eat, though I think even he'd find it funny that you can save money live better, though no one seems to wonder "better than what and when?" Fine line between Sugar Mountain and Walton Mountain. What is it Jason said to Grandma, "I'll rise but I sure won't shine." That's what I'm afraid of.
-bill kenny