And the Alternative Is...

All Ye Who Don't Shop Often:

Bringing you up to speed, at Walmart they have taken down the signs that said "Do the Math," when they really meant, add and subtract (that's Doing the Arithmetic). Anyway, whatever euphemism you wish to use, I was there recently because they sell Purina dogfood in the 18 pound package $1 cheaper than they do at Safeway. (Now the signs read SAVE, or did last weekend, which they can rest their cases on. But there is more to Walmart than just SAVE.)

Where else can you buy blue jeans, ladies' underwear, dogfood, craft supplies, carrots and celery for tomorrow's soup (not soup du jour, but soup de manana if you will) all well as fill your prescriptions, get a hotdog, get lost, and have experiences you never planned ahead for???

There may be quality control opportunities in a few central Florida Garden Centers, but they could easily be alleviated if only a few mongooses were let loose overnight for patrol purposes (see "Man Sues After Bitten By Snake at Walmart", AP newswire).

The last time I was in Walmart in Arizona, I was gandering about and kind of looking for my lost or misplaced husband, who gets lost every time we go into a big store, despite the fact that he can drive from here to downtown New York City without ever consulting a road map because he knows, he just senses, which way is north without looking to see which side of the trees the moss grows upon. It is an inborn talent, which I do appreciate (trying to overlook the time spent looking for him and concentrating instead on his good qualities.)

ANYWAYS, I looked down the main aisle about 50 feet (just a short distance inside of that really big building) and there was this slender man with a little black mustache and slicked back wavy hair. Beside him was his silhouette that looked as if someone had taken a sharp pair of scissors and cut out the outline of a person. (Strange, but there were no insides to this person; this gentleman and his void of three dimensions that moved along next to him were headed my way.) Three things occurred to me:

1. Now I knew I really needed new glasses.


2. I've got to stop watching those paranormal TV programs.


3. Take Cover!

So I ducked behind a display, and hidden behind my shopping cart loaded with 18# of Purina's best, I waited. They finally came into view, and bless gracious, that void was a beautiful black lady dressed in a very stylish black outfit. From a distance I couldn't tell where the lady stopped and the outfit began. She smiled at me. All was right with the world again.

Another thing. I was passing by one of those $4 per DVD kiosks, and my arm just reached out on its own and snagged a Matthew Broderick "The Producers" classic. I don't know how that happened, but what a bargain! $4 for a Broadway show! I placed it in the cart. Things were now really rolling -- $ave, dogfood, pretty lady, entertainment tonight ... what next? Where IS my husband?

I passed a couple speaking a foreign language, and lots of teenagers in those long crotch shorts that you can't help but wonder how they run with them on??? And once I caught a glimpse of an old lady pushing a shopping cart with an unusual expression on her face... and I wondered about her ... until I realized I had encountered a mirror in the ladies' department ... I don't look into mirrors anymore. It took a while to recognize me, but the dogfood in the cart did it.

My husband did finally turn up, and we paid the bill and began to exit the building, and then it hit me. You know how sometimes a riddle, a joke, an old saying, a pun, or a paraphrase will jump uninvited into your mind? I recalled a poem we had to memorize back in the 6th grade:

"Let me live in a house by the side of the road, where the race of men go by..."

But what came to me was:

"Give me a house close to Walmart, where the race of men go buy..."

and I thought of all the criticism that Walmart generates (because of jealousy I suppose) when I know they hire employees who aren't trained for Microsoft duty (or who have been laid off from Microsoft) but they have a J O B, and I thought of the rest of the poem which also seemed appropriate:

"So why should I sit in the mourner's seat, or hurl the cynics' ban?

Let me shop at the store called Walmart, and be a friend to man..."

P.S. Dear Wally: The bill's in the mail...