The Curmudgeonly Professor Accompanies his Wife to Wal*Mart
My wife, who had formerly forbidden me to accompany her to Wal*Mart, Costco, or any department store, because of allegedly getting lost or being impatient and obnoxious, obviously forgot her former grievances and asked if I wanted to go to Wal*Mart with her this morning. Being tired of sitting around home and checking the page views on my blog, I quickly assented.
When we arrived at Wal*Mart, I discovered my wife had what she thought was a new fail-safe system. She gave me a list of stuff to buy, told me to get my own cart, and sent me off on my own into the 40 acre cavern. Since I was free to throw stuff in the cart without her commenting that "we don't need that," I had added at least 40 bucks worth of stuff that looked appealing to me that I knew she would never buy herself or let me buy if we were pushing our little shopping cart through the store arm in arm in perfect matrimonial harmony as we begin our 57th year of wedded bliss. We enter through the store through the "exit" sign, clearly visible in above photo, wondering while all of these idiots were coming out the entrance. We pass up the greeter who is too busy visiting extensively with someone to greet us and make us happy that we had decided to spend our morning and our money at Wal*Mart.
Eventually, my wife caught up with me and informed me that she had bought about half the stuff already that was on my list since she could see I would never get around to it. "OK, I said, let's go." We get up to the checkout counter, and she says, "Where are the milk and eggs?" "Milk and eggs," I say, "What do you mean?" "I mean milk and eggs were on your list. Where are they?" "Alas," I say, or something perhaps more colorful, "I seem to have overlooked them. Let's get them tomorrow." "No," she says, "get back to the far corner of the store and get them." Thus, I trudge three miles back to the far corner of Wal*Mart, where prices are "always cheaper," to find the milk and eggs. A friendly Wal*Mart employee asks me when I get back there if everything is all right. I inform her that my wife had informed me that I had overlooked the milk and eggs. And I had to walk for miles to come back and get them. Meanwhile I encountered another geezer who was looking for his wife and mumbling something incoherent.
My wife learned her lesson the last time she turned me loose with the list for ingredients for green bean casserole and I got home with everything but the green beans never to trust me again. So now she double checks my purchases before we go through the checkout line. She thinks she's so funny.
We leave through the actual exit door as the "greeter" mumbles something to us on our way out. We have a gourmet lunch of a $1.29 bacon cheeseburger at Wendy's and head home. My wife continues to discuss the milk and eggs most of the way home. Maybe I should stick with blogging.
