So I’m on the way home from the Depot, thereinat to purchase another two gallons of liquid chlorine to dump into the re-hazed pool water. Traffic is its usual demented self.
I decide to stop at the Walmart up on Gangbanger’s way, thereinat to purchase…what? Some fruit to eat for breakfast…some cheap pasta, having run out of the fancy stuff from AJ’$; and a few other small things.
This place never ceases to amaze me. What do I find in it?
- Pasta, all right. Are you ready? REAL made-in-Italy-with-Italian-ingredients (altogether RoundUp-free) pasta! Yes. Just like the stuff at AJ’$, only marginally affordable.
- A bottle of 14 Hands Cabernet, one of my favorite cheapo wines…two bucks less than I paid four days ago at Fry’s, which was already pretty cheap.
- A ripe watermelon, truly ripe to my now very practiced eye: no doubt imported from Argentina.
- Passels of ebony-haired brown-skinned mothers with beautiful little Hispanic children, so adorable as to die for. Long may they thrive!
- A tired bum making his way through the aisles, searching out something decent to eat and to pay for with his food-stamp card.
- An extraordinarily stupid woman standing near the front door hollering at the cashier, “What time does the pharmacy close?” (Walmart pharmacies, interestingly enough, shut down over the lunch hour.)
- A weary-looking, worn cashier who replies (hang onto your hat), “There’s a sign at the pharmacy counter that says when they close.” 😀
- A weary-looking, worn cashier who manages to perk up when I say to her, “How’re you doin’ today? You look like you’re workin’ too hard…bad for your health, don’tcha know?” We laugh. We comment on the weather. Her day improves, maybe…if only for a moment.
Ah, Walmart. Ah, humanity…