Tag Archives for Walmart

Instant Buggy Karma

Grocery Cart

So as I’m walking back to my car the other night, I see this young couple getting in their car. Dude gets in his side and their car cranks up. That’s when I notice he’s left the buggy right next to his car like myriads of other douchebags who can’t at least run it up on a nearby median or something. They finish with their groceries and don’t even bother to look around for the buggy corral.

I’m stopped about 15 feet from their bumper, and openly watching them. I’m watching because this guy has topped all the other douchebags who do this. He was too lazy to move the buggy away from his car. The car-buggy gap was only two inches. I was parked to the right of him, so I had an excuse for standing their waiting. Sure enough, when he starts to back up, his car slides against the buggy, which catches on the back door of his car and gets dragged a foot or two. He looks at me with a stupid ‘aww-shucks’ smile. “Shit,” he proclaims, in what I imagine is a daily mantra for him.

My first impulse, even in this situation, is to help. To grab the buggy for the idiot. And although I can’t be certain, I think for a split second he was thinking the same thing. Maybe this complete stranger will come take care of this for me if I wait long enough. I stand still and smile back at him. He stops the car, and since the buggy is now next to his door, he has to carefully edge out of the driver’s door so as not to scrape it on the buggy. I begin walking to my car now as he grabs the buggy and takes it to the corral that is, are you ready for this, in the parking space directly opposite him. I hold back when I start to shout “INSTANT BUGGY KARMA!”

He’s only one ladder rung away from the people who pour drinks out next to their cars. Sticky veneers of high-fructose corn syrup and caffeine just waiting to make every step I take though a store a duct-tape ripping noise. And those shmucks at the very bottom; people who leave diapers in the buggies. This is especially disturbing because you know the Walmart employees don’t do anything but pull it out with a stick or something. Then you wonder in and set little Sarah down in the turd buggy.

These are the same people that drop their screaming kids off at the three dollar movies for five hours on Saturday night. Whose houses burn down because their Christmas tree was still lying in the corner in March. Who pee on toilet seats. Who watch the same channel for six hours straight because they left the remote on top of the TV (Okay, I’ve done that, but only a couple of times. It’s not a habit.).

I’m so irritated by all this I can hardly think. I stand next to my car and take special care to aim my urine directly into the drain below, being careful not to splatter, then drive home, trying not to think about all the idiots in the world.

The Dark Sam

I’ve wondered around Wal-Mart for an immeasurable amount of time.  I say ‘immeasurable’ because once your physical body passes through the portal under the black hole marked ‘Grocery,’ and the elder gatekeeper greets you, time, space-time, whatever you want to call it, ceases to obey the laws of physics.  Minutes are made of syrup, and not that runny knock-off brand of syrup either.  I’m talking Log Cabin minutes.  Reference points disappear.  The gatekeeper offers you a weighted receptacle.  This is to slow you down.  It also sends a subliminal message that you must now fill said receptacle.  As your Will begins to leave your body, the automaton drags you forward.  You believe you are in control.  That you are the one manipulating the receptacle.  You are not.  The connection you made when you placed both hands on the bar has short circuited your Will.  The connection from the wheels to the floor connects the receptacle to The Dark Sam.  There is now a direct flow of Consumerism flowing from The Dark Sam into you.

Now there is the Labyrinth.  You creep slowly up and down every single isle.  You may feel as if you have only traversed the isles necessary to that little piece of paper you call a list.  The one you left on your kitchen table.  But you have not.  You are skipping forward in jilted sequences of awareness.  But you always follow The Dark Sam’s complete path.  It is manifest.  Behold.

And at some predestined locus of points, The Dark Sam will whisper the slightest hint of a suggestion in your pliant ear.  You and your party should separate.  Continue to separate parts of the Labyrinth.  You may start to resist, small remnants of your Will that splintered on exodus.  You do not wish to lose your mate to the Lost Path.  But The Dark Sam whispers into your very Soul.  That it’s not that big of a store.  That your mate will be right where they said they would when you return.  That you won’t both be circling the Labyrinth in the same direction, just out of sight of the other, for twenty Log Cabin minutes.  And when your receptacle is full, you approach the debit card portal.

This portal is congested.  The Dark Sam requires a sacrifice upon the altar with no quantity key.  This is proof, by the way, of The Sam’s inherit darkness.  The Sam is efficient.  It would be efficient to have a quantity key on the self-directed altars.  Yet there are none.  You must pass all twenty packs of Kool-Aid before the debit altar.  Individually.  Separately.  This is senseless.  Chaos.  Darkness.  The Sam is Dark.  Behold The Dark Sam.

All hail The Dark Sam.