Something is going on in Wal-Mart. And it’s not good. I think there must be a lack of oxygen in there. Like the complete opposite of whats happening in Vegas casinos. Everyone in there is in a bad mood, despite the 80 cent mangoes. That’s right, eighty cents. The employees, minus the occasional friendly greeter, purposely don’t look you in the eye when you desperately need their help. They actually look the other way or hide from you. Where did that blue vested guy just go? Maybe he has passed out, from the lack of oxygen. Today I circled that random crap cup, water bottle and thermos section numerous times. I almost grabbed some to buy. Almost. I tried to find the four things on my list with my three kids in tow. Stopping and touching every end crap, cap, along the way. “Nope. Put it back. We’re not getting that.” Whatever. I said it a lot of times but somehow we still managed to buy too many 97 cent plastic toys that will undoubtedly break in the first five minutes of play. Or they will junk up the family room floor, and I will step on them while carrying a load of laundry causing me to say the most suitable cuss word, “WAL-MART!”

I really needed to get one of those plastic baby pools. They’re not stacked up against the outside walls of the store anymore. They’re father away, in the parking lot. In the “lawn and garden” section, I learned. Makes sense, the parking lot section of the store. I’m certain that most dying hot summer stricken people just take them, especially after learning the process in buying one.

I asked an employee, “Can’t I just tell the lady at the register the price of the pool?”

“No. You have to go out and get one and bring it back into the store.” She {so helpfully} said.

I was on a mission. I abandoned my cart inside of the store. It would have been fine by me, though highly unlikely that somebody would move it. I prodded my kids to hold my hands or grab a leg while we crossed the parking lot to grab that plastic pool. Out there in the lawn and garden parking lot aisle. I rearranged a stack of pools, grabbed the big orange one, carrying it while balancing it on top of two of my children’s heads as we walked back across the road, into the Wal-Mart store. I proceeded to push our cart and try to walk through Wal-Mart with that hard plastic pool balancing on my three-year old’s head and wobbling side to side on top of the cart. Trying not to knock everything off of the shelves. I got to the cash register with our mangoes, and other straight-up crap. When we got lost, I had let my kids get Lunchables AKA kid crack. And I got a tube of Golden Oreos, a Wal-Mart souvenir of sorts. Really. I’m never going back to that store. Never. Ever. Even for the cheap mangoes. And pineapple.

We eventually made it to one of the two check out lines that were open. Cue the Wal-Mart plastic pool kicker of sorts…The employee at the register could not find a price on the pool. Anywhere. Imagine that. If only she could have overhead paged the nobody that was working in the hot parking lot section. I started lifting and holding the pool up. Trying not to take out one of my children in the process. Turning it over. Nope. No price. So, she just made up a price, which I’m pretty sure is a prerequisite for every employee operating a cash register. I thought it was $14.97. She did too. If it were possible for a non-stalker-ish person to have taken photographs, I would have wanted one of all of us carrying that pool to the car with the three boys in tow, several underneath helping/hiding. Then, maybe one of me opening the back of the van shoving it in, unintentionally making a plastic pool fortress for my boys the whole car ride home. I could only see orange, my boys giggled, hidden under the pool. Amazingly and surprisingly enough, I learned it was made in the USA. Score. I found the whole scene pretty hilarious, eventually, after all of the oxygen returned to my head.