Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Wal-Mart

Is it Wal-Mart or is it society? Whatever the answer is...people never cease to shock me.

I am walking along (minding my own business) and I see a lady pushing a cart with a baby carrier in it that is conveniently holding her purse. Interesting. Then, about eight feet behind her comes a little girl (maybe 7 or 8...I could be off just a little) carrying a baby who was probably a few months old. She smiled at me (I'm wondering if I knew her from church as she also slightly waved). I am sure she saw the shock on my face as my mouth dropped open. I don't know about you, but I don't think I would let a child that young carry a baby that young as she's walking around...

Then, after I picked up my cat food, I saw a little girl (maybe 4) run off to the bike section by herself. Wondering who she was with...my inner teacher just had to come out. I asked her where her mom was or who she was with as I started looking for a Wal-Mart employee to help find her adults. I secured an employee and stayed there (again, teacher in control) and tried to help figure out where her guardians might be. I probably talked to her for a couple of minutes and all of a sudden this lady in a pink shirt (which the little girl had told me that Grandma was wearing) had appeared from an aisle. The little girl went with grandma and all was good again. However, as I walked away, there was another lady who told me that apparently grandma had just been standing there watching the employee and I chat away with her. I don't know about you, but if that had been my child that had wandered away, I would not stand there and watch. I would thank the person who had found them. I would have walked up to them as soon as I saw my child.

As I'm finally checking out, I ended up with the talkative and sometimes out of the box cashier. (Again inner teacher, but I think she might have had an IEP at some point in school...socially, it's just sometimes awkward conversation.) As she's scanning my cat food, she mentioned that I could feed her cats. She asked how many cats I had. I replied, "Just one." I ALMOST said that I wasn't a crazy cat lady. She told me she had eight. Oh, thank you, that for ONCE I had held my tongue. Apparently, five of them are newborn kittens.

Oh Wal-Mart...thank you for such an exhilarating time.

1 comment:

Christi.Overman said...

I HATE WAL-MART almost more than any place in our society and try to avoid it at all costs. And I TOTALLY know the cashier you're talking about--last time I was there she tried MULTIPLE times to touch my baby and after Ian and I BOTH backed away, she said, "Hey! Why do you keep backing up? I just want to touch him!" Thank God for giving me the grace to not slice her hand right off.

In sum: Wal-Mart is of the Devil.