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World of Walmart


I used to genuinely love going to Walmart. walking around, and seeing... stuff. I still do, but it's more out of being a glutton for punishment, maybe? In my ever advancing age I have come to discover that I'm not terribly fond of people in general. I go to Walmart (or any place outside my house, really) as if to dare myself to have a panic attack or what used to be called an episode. Or maybe not so much one of those, but a fit of rage. I can't walk five feet without someone stepping or stopping right in front of me. People are just... everywhere. "Well, everybody else has just as much right to be there as you," I don't literally hear you rebutting (that's a funny word), but everybody also has the right to have shit clanging around in their heads and what's inside mine is a swirling torrent of everybody-can-get-out-of-my-way-and-go-fuck-themselves. And it's not just, "Oh look. People. I hope they all die for no reason." It's not that at all. Not totally. If I feel like I hate someone or something, it's usually for a pretty specific reason. Sometimes I can't quite articulate why if I'm asked. In those instances my go-to answer is, "Because fuck 'em, that's why." Not a great answer, but the best you might get on short notice.

This past winter I went to Walmart (of all things, right?). I was just going in for a couple of items, quick trip. I get to the aisle that I needed and just inside the aisle is a man. Not a kid. A full grown, adult, male human. He is looking at stuff. I can already not literally hear you overreacting. "He's just looking at stuff. What's the big deal?" The big deal is as follows. He had his cart behind him, lengthwise across the rest of the aisle in the space he was not personally occupying. He's blocking the whole show. Just as I'm about to say, "excuse me," he notices me, looks at me right in my eyes, and just as I'm expecting him to say, "Oh. I'm sorry," and move his shit, he then looks away from me and continues looking at stuff as if I was never there.

Why didn't I just say "excuse me" anyway? Well, citizen, I will tell you why. Because this guy looked me in my eyeballs. We made eye contact. If we were two infrared sensors, a chime would have gone off. Eye contact. That alone is sometimes all it takes for two people to fall in love and build a life together. So I think it's reasonable for eye contact to be more of an eye contract in which to understand that if your shit is in the way, you politely move it without any other form of exchange. Simple. I also didn't say "excuse me" because "excuse me" probably would have sounded more like "are you fucking retarded?" Well, here comes his wife. Great! When a man is being a dipshit, usually the wife will come along and solve the problem. She walks up and I'm expecting her to pull out a sword, slice him in half, and bequeath the sword unto to me so that I may remember this day and be buried with it as an apology for when I see him in the great beyond. Oh, was that a bit much? LOLz, no. Not that. As interesting as that may have been, all I'm expecting is for her to be like, "Oh. I'm sorry. Honey move the cart," and then the cart to be moved.

That's not exactly what happened. What did happened is she walks up, drops an item in the cart, looks at me, eye contact, looks at him, turns around, and walks back down the aisle. wwwwuuuuuuuut? I could not believe what was happening. Mind you, this was all in the span of about twenty seconds. I didn't just stand there stand there for, like, ten minutes. It was all really quick. At this point I figured anything I did or said would result in me being painted as the bad guy. No one else could know what just happened or how it had affected me. So I walked all the way around the other end of the aisle and they were there too. They weren't, but wouldn't that have been hilarious?

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