Image via WikipediaIt is ironic (and a little stupid on my part) that even after reading the
Badass Geek's post about the horror of a "quick shopping trip" and reading
Dick's Flashback Friday Post along a similar vein, my wife and I decided to get the grocery shopping out of the way before the weekend. We hit the local Super Walmart at 8:30PM yesterday (Friday night).
Let me set the scene:
* My wife HATES grocery shopping, especially at the super Walmart
* My wife hates loud squeaky shopping carts, especially when deaf people push them all around the store
* My wife hates waiting in the checkout line, but she is an expert at unloading the cart correctly on the conveyor
* My wife has a burning desire to run slow-walking, fat bastards over with a loaded shopping cart.
* Both my wife and I hate people who are not aware of their surroundings
* I wished to God last night for a pair of glasses with photographic capability...Please Lord!
Soooo we arrive at the store. List made. Just a few things. In and out like shopping ninjas. Hmmmm the parking lot seems to be a-bustle with activity. We park and make our move to the entrance. All the while reviewing the game plan..."no detours", "nothing not on the list", "no aisles we need nothing from". We break the huddle and hit the cart rack.
Problems already. Two enemy squads (families) block our quick attempt to grab a cart and get rolling. Oh yeah, my wife HATES waiting for anything when we are in a hurry. The families move out and we get our cart. Enter, turn left and hit the fruit and veggie section for the 4 or 5 things we need there.
As we head down the veggie section it is clearly apparent that this is NOT the time of day the
beautiful people shop Walmart. In fact I dare say that many a trailer and nearly-condemned apartment is vacant right now as their occupants are DIRECTLY in front of us. Some people think that just because it is dark outside others can't see what they are wearing once inside the store...WRONG!
Why all the super-duper sized women believe in their heart they can still wear clothes I suspect they couldn't wear in high school amazes me. And after having 5 or 6 kids ranging in age from 1 to 6, they really can't do it! Painted on pants and shirts that do not even come down to the top of their pants is not a good look anywhere but especially not in a grocery store. The only rolls I want to see are in the bakery department.
We proceed through the rest of the fruit and veggie area and then the first one is heard...eee eee eee eee the sound of the one squeaky wheel cart. My wife stops dead in her tracks and looks at me with laser eyes and pursed lips and says, "you've got to be kidding me". The direction of the sound and its target area are undeterminable.
We head down the first aisle hearing that sound getting closer and we can not figure out which direction we need to go to be moving away from it. Then we get to the end of the aisle and turn left and there is the lady pushing the squeaky cart! I tell my wife just ignore her she is moving away from our flight path. No can do...my wife has to stop, put her fingers in her ears and stare at this lady while she says (just short of loud enough to be heard by the lady) "you seriously cannot hear that?" I just kept walking to the next aisle. We are having fun now!
The rest of the food side of the store was a blur of large people with large families believing they were the only ones in the store and oblivious to the fact our cart was about up their ass. It was every bit the gauntlet of a boot camp punishment exercise.
Then we reached the far end of the food section, the dairy and frozen foods. Once we turned the corner, the symphony of squeaky wheel carts suddenly begins. There are carts in front, behind, an aisle over all squeaking in different pitches. My wife keeps moving even when I stop for soymilk and butter (silently laughing to myself for knowing she was about to go ballistic). This truly was torture worthy of Gitmo!
We then headed back towards the front of the store stopping at the ends of the aisles for the sundry items (no chance in hell of navigating down them with a cart) and grab the few items we needed there. Once again the original squeaky wheel cart lady is back. Curiously she does not look like she has put anything in the cart in the 20 minutes since we first saw her. I asked myself what the hell an older black lady in hospital scrubs would be doing at Walmart just pushing around an almost empty squeaky wheel cart on a Friday night??
The food part was done and now we need to cross the hazardous clothing and houewares minefield to get a shower curtain and some dog care items. We split up to finish this nightmare as quick as possible. I went to grab mouthwash and my wife headed to the pet section. I then made a fateful left turn and entered the danger zone directly behind the check out lines. What I saw, and clearly had failed to calculate, is how long the lines get when you are shopping for 6-8 people per tribe...and they are all in line with you!
I zigged and zagged through the human mass shrugging off wayward ankle-biters as I moved like a pro running back to the aisle where my wife was. It was during this time I realized another huge flaw in choosing this night to shop...it was NoTax Back To School weekend in Texas! Everybody and their kid were at this store!
I ran in to a solid immovable wall of humanity clogging every square inch of the school supplies aisles! WTF! Now I knew trouble was brewing...once I got my wife and we had to head back through that mob (with a cart this time) her barely contained irritation could boil over. I find her and warn her. It took over ten minutes to navigate over to the checkout line (of which they only had half the the lanes open). The whole while, the front of our cart was millimeters away from a lady's ass that looked like two pigs fighting under a blanket. If she had stopped short I know the front of the cart would have crumpled. She was moving at glacial speed with her 4 kids clammering about. This thought amused me.
Now we have to stand in line...behind the first lady who had the squeaky wheel cart!! She had managed to fill it to the brim since we last saw her AND now she had a stroller with a baby in it she had not had before? My wife was not amused and did not see the irony. And then to top it all off this was next to us (this is when I prayed for the glasses camera):
This is a bad picture but it is an elderly lady dressed, I presume, like a high school mascot! My wife grabbed my phone out of my hand and said, "I have to get a picture of this".
This was a long tour of duty.
The rest of the night went rather smoothly.
