To Walmart We Will Go

I am not an avid Walmart shopper. I have nothing against them, they just don't sell bananas. My girls eat bananas by the gross and I cannot go anywhere that does not sell them unless I am going to try to venture 2 stops in one trip with the girls in tow. So I go to Meijer - ALL OF THE TIME. It is amazing what you can find at Meijer. But, I found today, it is amazing what you can find at Walmart DIRT CHEAP. Honestly, I have never been so excited to look at plastic Dora placemats or any of the other myriad of things I did not know I needed until I saw how cheap they really were. WHO CAN RESIST OREOS WHEN THEY ARE CHEAP AND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAIN AISLE, I ASK YOU?!?! So I also wanted to comment on how it is amazing WHO you can find at Walmart. My dear friend, Lochmoor Mom, recently visited the Walmart in her little town and called me to pontificate on the level of society that seems to congregate there. Now, I am not usually a biased person, Reader, but let me just say in a very vanilla area, Walmart is, well... Local color *AHEM*. And even the vanilla sort is really kind of... Well... Freezer burned? I need to stop with these analogies. I used to call Walmart "The Screaming Child Store", much like I call Mexican Fiesta "The Screaming Child Restaurant" for the very fact that no matter WHAT time of day or night you visit these places there is an inordinate number of screaming children. The first time we shopped at the newest Walmart in Canton it was well past 10:00 PM (this was before children in our little lives) and there were 2 little boys, about 4 and 6 years old that found it to be great fun to roam around the store aimlessly, moaning, "Mama? Mama? Mama? Mama?" and they would take turns crying, too, so that there was a continual stream of lost child mantra occurring. As we shopped (I recall now that I was pregnant, because I was AMAZED at how cheap a body pillow was at Walmart and I had heard it helped you be more comfortable when you slept with your hugely extended belly - and that is not true, by the way), the boys' cries and supplications would fade as they wandered farther away, and then crescendoed as they maddeningly made their way back closer to us. This went on for the entire time we were there. After about 20 minutes I took a vested interest, as I was suddenly feeling the need to eat the children and put them out of my misery, and realized that their Mama was not missing but walking in front of them the whole time this was occurring. They were not lost. They were pleading for a lighter sentence of going home and going to bed instead of wandering around shopping at Walmart after 10 Pm at night.

Well, so as to be in perfect form, today I went and my children were screaming. It was mostly Emma, as she is determined to walk on her own and this means walk on her own wherever the wind currents take her. When I am looking for a particular plastic paper sorter tray that I actually went there to buy, she was forced to be contained in the cart. This resulted in prodigious wailing and pleading, in very good form, I might add, that I completely ignored. Because the one thing about Walmart is that you cannot find one damn thing you are looking for, if you know what I mean. Sure, you can find 100 things you are NOT looking for and realize how much you need to buy, but finding the one thing you know you need is a whole other story, which you just read. So the wailing child mystery is solved. That mother of the two wailing boys was probably looking for the same thing I was, and she knew that if she stood still that her children would be doing pretend snow angels right there on the office supply aisle floor, while holding an American flag, just like mine was, until I corralled her and made her do cart time.