Land Of The Lost

I enjoy grocery shopping. I should say I USED to enjoy grocery shopping. I suppose my love for it stems from my childhood when I would go with my mom to Albetson's and on occasion she would let us kids open the wheat thins and eat them while we were shopping. Recently however, my joy has been tainted by the very thing I used to love. I loved the environment. Each aisle was a new adventure. One side of the store was the jungle of produce while the other side was a industrial setting of meat and seafood. A surprise awaited around every corner. Now those surprises usually consist of an overweight gentleman scratching himself in front of the frozen pizzas. I'm sure all of you have experience Wal-Mart fever. No matter when you go, there seems to be an overcrowding of characters that can best be described as former carnival ride workers. Where do these people come from and why are they all congregating at Wal-Mart. I suppose I don't do myself any favors by always shopping on Saturday but these people appear at all hours of the day. Today I was deciding on which brand of peanut butter best represented my extreme attitude toward life, when I witnessed something rarer than a unicorn's bar mitzvah. There was an EXTREMELY overweight lady on a store provided motorized scooter. Well I'm not sure if she broke it, the battery went dead, or the entire machine just couldn't take its miserable existence anymore, but there she was in the middle of the aisle yelling across the store at what I can only assume was her husband for help. I guess her husband was too eager to get to the libations aisle and left her in the dust. I would have offered help, but she wouldn't stop muttering long enough for me to get a word in. It was just another example of the litany of surprises that can only be afforded at Wal-Mart. When will I learn my lesson and start shopping somewhere else? Probably never because I feel so much better at the state of my affairs after a brief hiatus into the land that dignity forgot.