Shopping at Wal-Mart
May 8, 2003

I’m grounded. My wife won’t let me go to Wal-Mart alone anymore. She says I have no self-control, but really she just doesn’t appreciate my implementation of our free enterprise system.

So what, if she sends me out for a package of brown sugar and canned tomatoes, and I come home with $66.26 worth of groceries and what not? (I love “what-not”.) I can’t be expected to suppress my hunter-gatherer instincts. It would be unnatural. And besides, she should have been more specific. Do you know how many kinds of “brown sugar” there are?

When I arrive at the store, I find the sugar aisle easy enough, and I even find the brown sugar. (Boy do I find the brown sugar!) There was dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, and golden brown sugar. There was golden light brown sugar. There was even a sugar that looked brown but it was called Turbo-something-or-other sugar in the raw! It didn’t even have a plain brown wrapper on it!

Well, being the conscientious shopper that I am, I decide to call my wife and ask her about the brown sugar. But I would have to first find a phone. On my way, I’ll pick up the canned tomatoes. ‘Sounds simple enough.

I find canned tomatoes on the canned vegetable aisle. But, botanically speaking, the tomato is a fruit. This is clearly false advertising. Lies! Nevertheless, here they are. But what’s this? Diced tomatoes, whole tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, finely diced tomatoes? Tomatoes with green peppers, whole tomatoes in tomato juice, diced tomatoes in tomato juice? (“…in tomato juice?” Doesn’t that go without saying?)

Who has the time to calculate all these various permutations and combinations of tomatoes and the way they are cut and what they are canned with? Just give me a tomato and a knife and I’ll cut it however I want and be done with it, before I could ever find it on those shelves. And if I want green peppers with my tomatoes, then I’ll go to the green pepper aisle and get one. Or maybe instead of green peppers, I want red peppers or black peppers or pickled peppers! …Oh, I’ll just call wifey on the canned tomatoes too. Where’s that phone?

While strolling along, I catch an item out of the corner of my eye. What’s this? Can it be?! All of a sudden the clouds parted, a sunbeam shown down from heaven and I heard a chorus of angels singing… Ding Dongs! I could have sworn that my wife told me that they didn’t make these anymore. More lies!

With four boxes of Ding Dongs now in my cart, I begin to explore this new land flowing with milk and honey. (Two gallons of chocolate milk and a family size jar of honey. Isn’t capitalism great?) As a matter of fact, I begin seeing a lot of stuff here at the store that I don’t ever see around our house!

Now, how did I get on this hardware aisle? (‘Must be instincts again.) Never mind, what’s this? I don’t know what it does, but it sure looks handy. I’d better get two of them.

Now I’m back in the grocery aisles. It sure would make things a lot easier to find if they would just organize everything by color. You would know right where to go. Ketchup, apples and ground beef would be together on the Red aisle, while mustard, bananas and Mountain Dew would be on Yellow. It would make it a little more complicated when buying M&M’s, but maybe you don’t like blue ones anyway.

Actually, to make it even simpler, you could have an aisle for each of the basic food groups: the meat aisle, the potato aisle, the Mountain Dew aisle, and the everything-else aisle. It would be a piece of cake. Oh yeah, the cake aisle.

To make a long story short, when I finally got home, my wife did not appreciate my cornucopia of provisions. All she could do was complain, and make some remark along the line of “Where’s the brown sugar?!” …And so now I am grounded.

But she can’t tell me what do. I have the right to exercise my privileges under our economic system. (Cue the humming of the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the background.) To do any less would be un-American! It’s our duty to support our nation’s economy. “I only regret that I have but one check card to use for my country.” I need…No, I must… I WILL go to Wal-Mart! (But if you guys see me there-- Do me a favor and don’t tell my wife that you saw me.)

© Copyright 2003 Glen Davis